Debauched Halflings

by RedNightDeer

Summary:

1976-77, sixth year, Hogwarts

Severus is being stalked by Aurora Sinistra, who, for some reason, is sure that Severus would want to help her take down the Dark Lord.

Sirius is trying to come to admit he might be feeling more than friendship for one particular Marauder.

Remus has two secrets, one is about his lycanthropy, the other about who he loves.

James is searching for his true self amidst his relationship with Lily.

And Peter? Well, he keeps seeing ominous forms in his tea cups.

Chapter 1: Severus and One Annoying Classmate

Notes:

Hello, and welcome to my first Harry Potter fic ever!

Even though this fic is going to explore crushes, and there will be some characters with one-sided crushes, only the couples in the relationship tag part are going to be endgame, so if you clicked on this fic for your otp and see one of them having a crush on somebody else, do not worry!
For Severus and Sinistra, nothing is sure and certain yet, that's why I put them with question marks. I do want them to end up with a partner, but we'll see with whom they have chemistry as the story goes on.

Another thing: in this fic, sixth and seventh year classes are mixed, meaning all four houses participate in the same class at the same time. That’s how you will see Hufflepuffs, Slytherins, Ravenclaw and Gryffindors attending a class together.

Also, English isn't my first language, and 80% of it just spawned in my mind overnight, so if you do notice some grammatical errors, please do notify me in the comments. I sadly wasn't able to find a beta reader for this fic, so yeah, no beta, we die like Dobby... I guess.
Moreover, not only isn't English my first language, but I also do not know British slang at all. So, in my attempt to make these teenagers more "hype" and #kool, I might have mixed a bit of AAVE with the few British slangs I know. I am very sorry for that.

ATTENTION!
This fic will reference child abuse, and will tackle it in future chapters. There will also be some canon-typical violence to expect. This fic will also explore teenage sexual identity and sexual desires, so if you are uncomfortable with that, this fic might not be for you. It will also feature period-typical homophobia, including internalised homophobia.
Any other trigger will always be put at the very beggining of the chapter in the author's note to notify the readers.

Lastly, I need to tell you about the fic that inspired me to write this one: Falling Apart by Zain. If you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend you to go and do that, because it's an amazing fic!

This fic is going to be a long one, so buckle up everybody!
I really hope you guys will like it :)

The first time it happened, on an early sunny November day, Severus brushed it off. Aurora Sinistra had all the rights in the world to ask him about the Transfiguration homework McGonagall had given them for the next week. She had said she’d been sick and hadn’t been able to attend the class. At first, he’d recoiled from her, expecting mockery. With years of ridicule, his instincts had been forged in caution, treating any novelty with mistrust. But Sinistra’s neutral tone and expressionless face had eased his nerves. Their encounter had been brief and curiously professional for two simple students. 

Severus had wondered briefly why she had asked him instead of her Ravenclaw classmates, but had abandoned the train of thoughts as more important matters had needed his attention, such as the Marauders and their so-called ‘pranks’. 

The second time, he brushed it off again, thinking it might be a coincidence. Severus didn’t believe much in that, but he had no other explanation for Sinistra’s sudden talkativeness towards him. Two weeks after that ordeal, he’d been studying in the library. It was the only place where the Marauders couldn’t reach him, at least, not without angering Mrs. Pince. Sinistra had approached him about some potion book in the library that she couldn’t find, asking if he knew where it could be. Old habits were hard to shake off, and at first, Severus hadn’t answered her, just watching her. He wasn’t a stranger to long games that played with your trust: pulling you into a false sense of security and friendship, to pull it all off under your feet while humiliating you with a “Did you believe any second we would be your friends?”. So during their second meeting, Severus’s guard had risen. He was on edge. 

After the horrible humiliation he’d gone through last year where Potter and Black had decided to expose him in front of everyone, and where he had called his only friend an awful word, mockeries had rained on him. Even a summer holiday hadn’t calmed down his bullies’ dedication to reminding him of that day. He had started his sixth year with taunts about his undergarments and private parts. And while they were almost at the end of November, people still found it funny to mention that day to him. 

He’d been expecting something, anything, to tick him off about Sinistra’s true intentions. As he’d shown her the book, he’d watched her. Sinistra was a tall girl, with dark brown skin and black, coily hair pulled up in a messy bun. Curly locks framed her oval face, accentuating her high cheekbones and hooked nose. She had enhanced her upturned hazel eyes with blue kohl and some mascara. Large star pendant earrings dangled from her ears, and a gold piercing adorned her left nostril. When she reached for the book, Severus noticed she wore gold rings on all of her fingers. Her nails were short, with chipping pink nail polish. 

Once she had the book, she had thanked him with a small smile, and had left him back to his study. 

Nothing in her demeanour had seemed fake or overly friendly. 

After that, he kept seeing her in the hallways, and if their eyes met, she greeted him with a slight nod, before going back to talking with her friends. It made Severus shudder, like he was a participant in an unknown game that she was the master of. 

Their third meeting was only ten days later, in the hallways, in a little bit of a clandestine way. At least, for Severus’ case (even if he had a hunch it was also the case for Sinistra). It was way after curfew, in the uncanny hours of the night, when time slowed down and cold seeped into bones, too late into the night, but too early for morning. Severus was walking up the stairs to the astronomy tower, with his old, second hand cloak to ward off the chill, when he saw her coming down. When their eyes met, both froze on the spot like rabbits. 

Sinistra was the first one to break the silence. “Hi,” she whispered. “What are you doing here at this hour?” Her voice was devoid of any malice. Her question seemed genuine.

“I could ask you the same,” he retorted. 

“Wanted to look at the stars for my astrology homework. But the place is already occupied by a couple,” she said, shrugging. 

Severus grumbled. He had wanted a quiet place to just relax a bit and study the moon phase for his potion idea. 

Contrary to him, Sinistra didn’t look bothered by the couple exploiting a study place for coitus. Instead, she said while walking away, “I know another place. It’s as good as the tower for star watching.”

Going against his instincts, Severus curiously followed her. They made their way through deserted hallways, and walked towards the owlery, but when Severus thought they would go there and watch the sky surrounded by owls, Sinistra passed by that door and continued. After a bit, she stopped in front of an old, wooden door and pointing her wand to its handle, she whispered something too low for Severus to hear. 

The door creaked open, and without hesitation, she went in. Severus stopped at the threshold and peeked in. In front of him, narrow spiral stairs went up. As he climbed them up, he could see Sinistra tinker with a trapdoor’s latch. With a thud, it easily opened to her. She made her way through it and disappeared. 

Severus stalled for a moment, leaning against the cold stone, wondering if it was intelligent to follow a stranger to some remote place in a castle in the dead of the night, but decided to go on. So he made his way up and through the trapdoor, the rough texture of the old wood tingling his fingertips. 

He was met with a large octagonal room with bare walls and eight lancet windows with louvers. The moonlight filtering through them cast striped shadows on the floor. As he looked up, he could see wooden beams crisscrossing the arched ceiling. 

But the star of the place was the huge, dark bell standing ominously in the middle of the room, hovering several feet above the floor. It was easily as big as a car. Time and weather had matted and darkened its once shiny surface. 

Some dull carpets partially covered the floor, and cushions had been thrown all around. In a corner, books had been stacked, with a mug on top like it was a coffee table. And next to it, there even was a kettle.

Sinistra sat on one of the cushions next to a window and pulled out from her pocket a few shrinked objects. As she enlarged them, parchments and a brass telescope appeared. She started fiddling with the latter, looking into the eyepiece, then going back to turning some pegs on the side of the main tube, and going back to looking through the eyepiece. She was tuning her telescope, but with the grunts she was letting out, Severus could understand that something was wrong. 

“Come on, don’t go dead on me yet…” she whispered, angrily turning the pegs. 

“Can’t you watch the stars without it?” he blurted out.

“Can you make potions without a cauldron?” she retorted, not even deigning to look up.

Severus had to admit it had been a stupid question. “Why isn’t it working?” he asked instead. 

This time, she looked at him when she answered. “Because it’s old junk. Second-hand, or to be honest, I think I’m like the sixth hand that has touched this baby,” she explained, caressing fondly the optical tube like one would a kneazle. “But it’s at the end of its life. The more you shrink and enlarge astronomy instruments, the more the lenses lose their focus. It’s been a while since I’ve needed a new one but…” she shrugged instead of finishing her sentence, rubbing her thumb and index finger. 

Severus nodded, glancing away from her too-knowing eyes. He decided to focus on the first thing he would see, which was an old student desk, pushed against the wall, just under one of the windows. He approached it, noticing the quills and parchments left on it haphazardly. He could make out different star maps on them, with calculations on the margins and hastily written names on top of large dots. Some maps had been completely crossed with red ink. 

He gazed back at Sinistra who was looking defeatedly at her telescope, pursing her lips. 

“Why did you bring me here?” he asked. 

Startling, she looked up as if she had forgotten his presence. Severus pushed down his annoyance at this. 

“Oh, well… you wanted somewhere to study the sky, right?”

“Sinistra. Why did you bring me here? This is no simple abandoned classroom. This place…”

“It’s a belfry.”

“Whatever. Why did you bring me here? This is clearly a secret, and more importantly, a private spot. Why share it with me, a stranger?”

Sinistra let go of her broken instrument and got up. “Maybe… maybe I like you?” Her fingers were playing with the hem of her jumper, and she looked down, in a way Severus thought meant to be bashful.

“Don’t make me laugh,” he gritted out. 

Sinistra huffed and that coy act disappeared. “Well. I might need your help.”

“What for?”

“Well, for starters, you could help me off Voldemort.”

“What?”

“And then, if we have time, we could finally live too, for the fun of it.”

—

After that night at the belfry, Sinistra blatantly stalked him. She would always appear in his periphery, sometimes occupied with something, but often watching him. It was creepy. 

He hadn’t told any of his housemates about her confession. Even if he thought her crazy, the last thing he wanted was to send her way a swarm of vultures, ready to pick apart anyone to quench their bloodthirst. 

But his resolution was weakening with every of her appearances near him. She even had sat next to him at his next DADA class (which she hadn’t even been attending before? Who had let her in?) and had passed him a little piece of parchment. The elegant writing had told him to meet her at the Belfry after curfew.

He had barricaded himself in his room. 

At least, Severus knew he wasn’t the crazy one between the two of them. One evening, he had heard Sinistra’s friend ask her why she kept glancing his way. He hadn’t heard her answer, as he had quickly made his way to the dungeons, half horrified and half relieved by the friend’s confirmation of his suspicions. 

As December neared its end, Severus childishly hoped that the winter break would give him and Sinistra much needed distance. Almost as a Christmas gift. 

Alas, on the morning of the 24th December, as he strode into the Great Hall, the sight of that curly bun and star earrings, of those chipped pink nails and blue kohlled waterlines stopped him in his tracks. 

Sinistra gazed at him behind her pumpkin juice, smirking, like the cat that ate the canary. She even impudently raised her glass at him. 

Severus just nopped out of there, walking towards the dungeons instead, where the kitchen resided. He would ask the elves to give him something. He wasn’t a picky eater, you couldn’t be one with a childhood like his. 

As he stepped into the kitchen, the dry air burned his lungs for a moment. Immediately, sweet whiffs of roasted chestnuts, cinnamon, and cloves caressed his nostrils, deepening his hunger. The elves were chatting and lazily preparing food. One of them, a small elf with big blue eyes like marbles, approached him. 

“What would the Master want?” they asked him. From just how they looked, Severus couldn’t guess if it was a male or female elf. Most of them were androgynous looking. 

“Just some food.”

The elf nodded and hopped towards the many different pantries lining against the walls, encircling the kitchen. On the right side of the room stood a small table curved downward from age with two sturdy wooden chairs and Severus sat on one. 

The kitchen had two large hearths, each on one side, like football posts. The fire in them was blazing, illuminating the kitchen in red and yellow hues and warming the interior like a sauna. On top of them, cauldrons bubbled and rich steam rose up and cooled on the ceiling beams. Between the hearths, a long and wide table made of sturdy wood stretched out. On it, a dozen elves were sedulously kneading doughs and sending them with an old elf to the oven tucked in a corner. The latter quickly closed a cast iron door over them to let them bake. 

The first marble eyed elf came back, hovering a plate and glass behind them. As the food gently landed in front of him, the elf left Severus’ side. He started to hungrily eat the beans on his plate and missed the door of the kitchen opening and someone slipping in. Only did he notice when Sinistra sat across him. 

“Hi,” she said. 

Severus lost his appetite. 

He put his head between his hands, contemplating if he just left would she follow him. The answer was ‘surely’. 

“What do you want from me…” he whispered, but Sinistra must have heard. 

“Actually, the date, hour and place of your birth will be enough for now.”

“What?” he mumbled, taken aback. He raised his head and looked at her. “What?”

“Date of birth,” she repeated, “and hour and place, if possible. I would prefer it if you can give me all three, but I can manage with just the date.” 

“Why would… Why would I give you my date of birth?” he yelled, eyes big like saucers. 

“If you don’t give it to me, I’ll just go and find the information elsewhere. Really, Severus, make it easier for both of us, and just give me that date.” And she started helping herself to his bread and bean sauce. 

“Why would–”

“Because I need to calculate some shit, alright?” she said, as she took his unused knife and used it to eat one of his bacon sausages. 

“If you’re hungry, just ask the elves for some food,” he hissed, pulling his plate away from her. 

“Nah, I’m not that hungry,” she replied, reaching out and plucking one of his sausages with her – his – knife again. 

“Then why are you eating my food?” 

“I don’t know, it looked nice on your plate, I guess.”

“You’re–” Severus didn’t know what she was. Infuriating? Scary? Creepy? “Anyway, stop bothering me. Seriously.”

“I will, if you give me what I want.”

“Which is…?”

“You’re date of birth! Severus–”

“Don’t call me by my first name!”

“Well, Sssnapeh,” she drawed out the ‘s’ and popped the ‘p’. 

“What are you going to calculate with my birthdate?”

“Your birth chart, duh. See it as a gift. Do you have any idea how much a complete birth chart costs? And I’m willing to do it for free!”

“And why do you want to do that?” he sneered.

“To see if we’re compatible,” she confessed, looking down and pushing a lock behind her ear.

“Bollocks.”

“Indeed,” she deadpanned, looking back into his eyes. “But I need that chart, Severus Sssnappeh . The earlier you give me your birth date, the earlier I’ll be done with your chart, and the earlier we’ll know how to take down that motherfucker.”

“You’re delusional!” he hissed angrily. “At what point did you believe you could fight and win against that wizard?”

“On the third of November.”

As she answered him in a hushed tone, he saw something in her eyes, a glint of hard determination, of ‘I’ll burn the world for my goals’ . Severus shuddered. His hairs prickled in anticipated fear. This girl was crazy. And she wanted to pull Severus into the abyss she was already falling into. 

He got up in a hurry, but she caught his wrist. 

“Severus,” and her voice sounded serious for the first time, “I’ll wait for you.”

“Don’t bother,” he sneered, pulling free his arm. 

“It might take days, weeks or months, but in less than a year, you’ll come back to me.” Her words were ominous, and cold sweat ran on his back at the resoluteness in her voice. She finally stood up and made her way to the door. “No need for you to, I’ll leave.”

The door closed with a loud thud and Severus was left alone among working elves and cooking dishes. 

—

The end of the holiday approached quicker than Severus had anticipated. Lost in his swirling thoughts of one Ravenclaw and her foreboding words, he suddenly found himself one dark morning sitting on a breakfast table in the Great Hall surrounded by his housemates and their holiday anecdotes. Classes had started back and Severus made his way to the Transfiguration class feeling all numb. As he sat in the back, someone slid next to him. 

“Hi,” greeted Sinistra.

After their meeting in the kitchen, she’d stopped bothering him, making herself scarce. 

Guess the stalking was back on. 

“Ninth of January, huh? It’s this weekend!”

“How did you—” he whisper-yelled, since McGonagall had started her class. 

“I have my ways.” She turned back to the blackboard where a hovering piece of chalk copied McGonagall’s explanations. 

Suddenly, near the front rows, a girl turned around, eyebrows furrowed, and fixed Severus. 

“That’s my best friend,” whispered Sinistra. “Charity. Charity Burbage.”

The girl had shoulder length blond hair that framed her heart shaped face with blue doe eyes, a small button nose, and round pink lips. 

“She’s pretty, isn’t she?” Sinistra kept going on.

Severus grunted noncommittally. 

“We come from the same town. Met when we were just five years old. We would get into so much trouble but it would be so fun.”

Severus couldn’t stop himself from remembering Lily and their childhood shenanigans. 

“She’s from the good side of town. Pretty lawns and happy families.”

Lily had been from the good side too and it had shown in her brand new dresses and her smile, her ease when she was around her parents. She hadn’t feared angering her parents when she got into trouble with him. Severus had witnessed for the first time scolding parents that didn’t raise their hands or their voice with hers. It had been quite an experience. A reality check that some kids… didn’t fear their parents. 

“I was a lonely kid. No friends,” continued Sinistra. “And out of the blue, Charity decided that I was good enough for her, that she would become my friend.”

It had been the same with Lily. She had plucked him from his desolated state and decided to keep him by her side. 

“I was there when she manifested magic for the first time. She's a muggleborn so she just couldn’t understand how she had managed to make our marbles fly in the air. Tried to explain it with the wind. But I…” and there, Sinistra’s voice shook with emotion. “I knew she was a witch and the happiness I felt was immeasurable, because now I could share all of me with her. I didn’t have to hide my magic.”

Seeing Lily at that park and telling her of her magical heritage had been a life changing moment. From there on, his fate and hers had been entwined… well, maybe only until last year, because since that day by the Lake, they hadn’t really spoken. 

As Burbage turned back and stopped fixating on them when McGonagall made a comment about it, Sinistra confessed in a hitched breath: “I love her.”

Severus’ neck almost broke from the speed he turned it towards her. “What?”

But Sinistra’s gaze was fixed on Burbage’s back. “I love her.” Then she turned towards him and looked him in the eyes. “You heard me right. I, a woman, am in love with another woman.”

He didn’t know what to answer. Had Sinistra just… came out to him? “Oh… well…” 

“You don’t have to comment on it. I just wanted you to know, because you’re not alone.”

“I’m not gay,” he whispered hastily. “I—”

“No, you idiot. You’re not the only one in love with a muggleborn childhood friend that came from the good side of the town.”

“I…”

“Do not try to deflect. You are in love with Lily, and I know it. I’m pretty sure the whole school knows about it, but that’s another story.”

“What do you mean by ‘the whole school’ ?” he hastily asked, squeezing his quill in his hand.

“That’s not the important part, Severus.”

Severus thought it was. He had always protested the love accusations, saying he loved her like one would a sister. He knew he had no chance with Lily. Never had. The least thing he could do to save his ego would be to say his love for her was like for a family member to save face. Because there was no way a girl as pretty as Lily would look at an ugly boy like him. Declaring his love would be humiliating. 

He knew the love rumors had reached Lily’s ears. One day, back in third grade, as they had been sitting outside, profiting from the spring sun, she had asked him if they were true. 

“Oh, please, Lily,” he had scoffed, not even looking up from his book. “These idiots just started their puberty and suddenly their little brains cannot conceive of any world in which a girl and a boy are friends.” Lily had looked thoughtful, and Severus had feared he hadn’t been persuasive enough.  “Lily,” he had called to her. “We grew up together. You’re like my sister,” he had lied impudently. 

At that, she had smiled at him, bright like a thousand suns. “Yes, Severus, you’re my brother.” And she never had breached the subject ever again. 

While he had won over Lily, guess he hadn’t been convincing enough for the rest of the school, though.

“Listen. I don’t know what you want from me—”

“Oh but you do. I told you. I want you to help me kill V—”

Before she could finish her sentence, he clasped his hand over her mouth. “Are you crazy?” he hissed. “Don’t say his name!”

As an answer, she licked his palm.

“Eurgh!” he gagged, pulling away his hand and wiping it off his cloak. “That was disgusting!”

“Mister Snape! Miss Sinistra!” yelled McGonagall. For a very thin woman, she had quite a strong voice. “Is there anything you want to share with the class?” 

“No, ma’am,” they answered in unison. 

“That’s what I thought,” said McGonagall and went back to her teaching. 

After that, to Severus’s joy, Sinistra stopped bothering him and they went back to studying instead of bickering. 

As the class finished and he was gathering his books and quill, she held out a piece of parchment. 

“That day, I didn’t give you the passcodes to the Belfry. Here. First one is for the door, the second one is for the trapdoor.” 

“I don’t need it.”

“But you will.” Her voice had a weird tint of certainty. 

“No, I—”

“I’ll be waiting for you, Severus.”

“You’re losing your time. I won’t come,” and without much ado, he put the piece of paper on fire wordlessly. 

“Well,” she said. “I’ll leave you then. I have Muggle Studies now and it’s on the other side of the castle. Enjoy your break.” 

As she made her way towards the door, she turned around for one last time. 

“Severus, on Sunday, I’ll be at the Belfry, waiting for you.”

“I said no need.”

“I’ll try to answer all of your questions, even though some answers do elude me.” And leaving Severus with her ominous words, she left for her next class. 

Chapter 2: Sirius and One Interesting Chick

Sirius’ life had always been broken. Like a plate thrown at a wall. From his first moments, his job had been to collect those pieces and stick them back together. For the first ten years of his life, he’d had no glue to do it. All he could do was to pick the pieces and hold them in his hands. 

And then, Hogwarts had happened, and Sirius had been gifted something better than glue: gold. 

Kintsugi was the Japanese art of repairing an object with gold, and thus making it more valuable than it was before breaking. 

So Sirius had started sticking back his life together with the help of his friends. James, Remus and Peter had been that gold. And now, after years, he finally felt whole. 

However, since last year, the gold wasn’t sticking as it had once, and the pieces threatened to chip and fall. Sirius had done it himself. He could admit it. He wasn’t that much of an oaf. Sending Snivellus to Moony had been beyond stupid. And just with one moment of weakness, he had cut his gold supply. 

Those hazel eyes of Moony had lost their spark and nowadays avoided him. 

Calm and studious Moony. Gentle and loving Moony. He always smiled, whatever the situation, whatever the circumstances, always the mum of the group. Moony was hard to read as a person. It had taken Sirius years to learn the small mimics that explained Moony’ real thoughts. 

And now, he could read in his body language that he was wary. Of Sirius. Of what he could do again. 

Sirius had asked for forgiveness. Multiple times. Moony had forgiven him verbally, but his eyes? No. He wasn’t forgiven. 

And Sirius didn’t know how long he could go on without Moony’s golden eyes. 

As his life had been shattered the moment he was born son to Walburga and Orion Black, Moony’s trust towards him had been broken that night in the shack. 

And now, Moony didn’t accept Sirius’s gold to stick back the pieces of his trust. 

So when he saw Snivellus and that one Ravenclaw chick flirting in their small corner of the classroom, his veins blazed hot. 

Here was Sirius dying, and that son of a bitch was already running after another girl, as if he had the right after how he had treated Lily. 

They were too far away for him to hear what they kept whisper-yelling at each other, but from the ugly sneers of Snivellus, he wondered what she could see in him. 

Next to him, Wormtail fidgeted, clearly overwhelmed by the subject of Gamp’s Laws (which they already had studied last year). He’d told him to not take NEWT level Transfiguration. As cute as Wormtail was, he wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. But no, Wormtail had decided to take six NEWTs instead of the five required, and now he kept stressing over homework and the upcoming exams at the end of the year. He kept having nightmares and Sirius could hear him mumble in his sleep about how he didn’t know how Leviosa worked. 

Behind them sat James and Moony. Since the ‘prank’, James kept Moony company, always taking care of any of his lil’ demands, as if he was dating Moony instead of Lily. 

For some reason, James being so close to Remus, and the latter accepting his attention willingly made Sirius’ stomach turn. 

Why was James, his brother but in blood, taking care of Moony when he could gently fuck off and let Sirius do it so he could mend his broken relationship with Moony? 

At his vulgar thoughts, Sirius physically winced. He shouldn’t think like that about James. He was doing his best to keep the group from falling apart. 

Next to him, having seen his face, Wormtail patted his arm, telling him he too found Gamp’s sixth law theory hard to understand. 

Oh, well. Wormtail might not have been intelligent, but he was caring. 

At some point, as the class kept going, McGonagall chastised Snivellus and that Ravenclaw chick but to Sirius’ woe, didn’t deduct House points. 

She was getting soft at her old age. 

The class ended anticlimactically, with McGonagall assigning them a twelve inch parchment about the sixth exception of Gamp’s Laws. 

Next to him, Wormtail was lamenting the length of their work but Sirius didn’t care about it. Their next class, Muggle Studies, was his favourite. It had been an uproar when his mother had learned he had taken that class as an OWL. China sets had been shattered against walls, but nothing had shifted either the mother or the son’s opinions. It’s with these thoughts that the class ended.

Behind the three other Marauders, Sirius made his way towards the door when he caught Snivellus and the chick still talking. Furrowing his brows, he made a gesture for the others to keep walking as he planted himself outside next to the door. 

“Severus, on Sunday, I’ll be at the Belfry, waiting for you,” said the Ravenclaw. 

A rendez-vous? For what? Clearly it couldn’t be romantic. Who would want Snivellus? The Ravenclaw chick was too nice looking for that Slytherin git. And belfry? Which belfry? There were like at least six of them at Hogwarts. 

“I said no need.” Of course Snivellus would look a gift horse in the mouth. Pathetic bastard. 

For a while, there were no sounds, and then, the girl said: “I’ll try to answer all of your questions, even though some answers do elude me.”

That… was weird. Answers? This whole thing didn’t sound anymore like a secret romantic rendez-vous. More like… plotting ? 

As the chick made her way out of the class, she glanced at him. “It’s impolite to eavesdrop, Black.” 

“So, did you lose a bet or something?” he asked. 

She kept walking, ignoring him. He quickly caught up to her. “Are you in Muggle Studies too?” 

“What if I am?”

“Nice. Let’s sit together. I bet—”

“No.”

“No?”

“No,” repeated the chick. “With no due respects, Black, leave me alone.”

“What if I don’t, baby girl?” he said, with his most flirtatious voice. 

She paused in her walk and turned towards him, face set in a scowl. “I’m not Severus. You can’t and won’t intimidate me.”

“Severus? You’re on a first name basis with him?” That was an interesting fact.

“Listen to me very well, Black. Leave me alone.”

“Again, what if I don’t?” He smiled at her, looking her up and down. 

“Stay out of my business,” she sneered and veered towards the library. 

“Where are you going? The class is this way,” he yelled after her. 

“I’m skipping.” And she disappeared behind a corner. 

Sirius was left speechless, but quickly remembered he had to attend his class, even if she was skipping. 

He made his way there, sitting next to Wormtail again. Moony was sitting on Wormy's other side. 

“So, why late?” asked Wormtail. 

“Ugh… I was… Do you know the name of the girl that was sitting next to Snivellus in Trans’ class?” 

“Someone was sitting next to him?”

“Yeah. Ravenclaw. Black girl with nose piercing and star earrings.”

“Ugh… I mean I didn’t look at Sniv’ during the class but that description sounds like Sinistra,” shrugged Wormy.

“Sinistra?”

“Hmm. Nova Sinistra. Wait, no. It wasn’t Nova. Aria Sinistra? Gosh, I can’t remember her first name. Anyway, she’s like the top student in Astrology in our year. She’s also good in Divination.”

“Remind me why you took that charlatanism class?” mocked Sirius. 

“It’s an easy O,” mumbled Wormtail. “She was a good student,” he added. 

“ ‘Was’ ?”

“Back in like mid November, she got detention from Armstrong,” explained Wormy. “He was teaching us how to calculate the Sidereal Zodiac degrees coupled with the Magnitude and she was like doing something else. So Armstrong got angry and told her she could leave if his class was uninteresting. She left without a word! And then when Armstrong understood she was truly leaving, he gave her detention for the weekend.”

“Why are you talking about Aurora Sinistra?” asked Moony, and Sirius was shocked. It had been a long time since Moony had dipped in a conversation from his own will. If not solicited, Moony’s usual quietness had become almost a vow of silence. 

“Padfoot said she was sitting next to Sniv’ during Trans,” relegated Wormtail. 

Moony’s brows furrowed. “She was,” he confirmed. “I didn’t know she got detention from Armstrong.”

“Did you hear what they spoke about?” asked Sirius, curiosity piqued. 

“No. They were too far,” answered Moony, looking down. 

Something in Sirius shifted. Moony looked like he had heard something, but had decided to not share. 

Before, he would have pushed, asked Moony over and over to tell him until his friend cracked and indulged him. But now… he had lost that privilege. 

“Since that day when she left she stopped attending the astronomy class,” revealed Wormtail. “I heard from McTavish that Flitwick called Sinistra to his office.”

“And?”

“And I don’t know,” he revealed, shoulders slumping. “But she still hasn’t attended a single class. Be it theory or practice. But at some point, Flitwick did scold Sinistra in the Ravenclaw common room when they were alone. Said she had to take her classes seriously.”

“How do you know that if they were alone?” asked Sirius. 

“Well, I was in a little bit of a smaller form,” whispered Wormtail, smiling. 

“Oh so you went to check the girls' dormitories,” taunted Sirius. 

“No, I didn’t! I was just passing by—”

“You should have, that would have been the only way you could have finally seen some naked chick.”

Wormtail turned red. “Don’t say that!” 

“Sirius, that’s not nice.” Moony’s voice turned cold. 

Sirius rolled his eyes. They were so prudish. James would have laughed, but James was… 

Wait. Where was he?

“Where’s James,” he asked, looking around the classroom. 

“He skipped,” revealed Wormtail.

“What?”

“He went on a date with Lily. It had been a bit of time since they had had a moment alone.”

Indeed, Sirius noticed a certain redhead gryffindor was missing too.

It made him uneasy. He could understand Prong’s desire to spend time with his girl, but come on, the group’s status was unstable. Was it really the moment to leave for some snogging?

“Cut him some slack,” said Moony. “He’s been doing his best since… then. He deserves some time away from us.”

Sirius looked away. His thoughts must have been readable on his face. Moony protecting James always got to him. He felt like a chastised kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar, but the feeling was worse when Moony protected James from Sirius’ words or actions. Weirdly, he didn’t feel that way when Moony did it for Wormtail.

Go figure why… 

Well, James’ date with Lily was expectable, but that Ravenclaw chick and Snivellus… that was quite interesting. 

As he was going to ask Wormy if he knew more about that girl, Professor Weatherwax started the class with the chapter they had been working on: hair spray, and as interesting as it was, hair sprays couldn’t make Sirius stop thinking about Sinistra and Snivellus. 

After an eventless class of Muggle Studies and an hour break to eat, they had some very boring Arithmancy class where Snivellus was sitting alone. The ravenclaw chick was nowhere to be seen, she either had decided to prolong her skip or she just was not taking that class. 

Sirius decided to pull aside Snivellus to ask him a few questions about Sinistra but the slytherin that he was, Sniv’ slipped away between the students and disappeared before Sirius could catch him. Next class was History, and even though Moony was taking it, Sirius wasn’t, so he pulled Wormtail by his arm outside to have some fresh air. 

Moony was completely busy until dinner, since after History, he still had Potions (usually James and Lily attended Potions too but they had decided to skip it too for their date), and wasn’t it horrible to have to share two classes with Snivellus without your friends around to help? Sirius shuddered. Thank Merlin, he had no class with Sniv’ without his friends. He would have died from it. 

Here lies Sirius Orion Black, brave Gryffindor, disowned son and brother to a person he had no blood relationship with, killed because he was too close to a smelly Slytherin.

Heh. That would be so funny. His mum would have destroyed yet another set of china in her rage. 

Outside, the land was covered by a thick blanket of snow, and the sky was white with clouds. Other students were walking around, huddled in their winter coats and bicolour scarfs. 

“Do you have the map?” asked Sirius, making a snowball and throwing it at a group of girls a little bit away. Noticing him, they giggled and one of them threw back a snowball. It hit Wormtail, to which except him, everybody laughed.

“No, James has it,” he answered, dusting his coat off of the snow.

Sirius scowled. They really needed a second map, but as much as they had tried to replicate it, it had never worked, for the simple reason that they did not know how they had made the first one in the first place. Lots of booze and some weed had been involved with the original map’s creation. Sirius had pushed to reproduce that same environment but Moony had put a stop to it, saying their dorm room had smelled horrible for two weeks straight, despite airing it almost 24 hours on seven, and with his peculiar nose, Moony had been very grouchy for those two weeks. Considering how precarious their relationship was, Sirius didn’t want to estrange Moony even more by raping his wolfy nostrils. 

“Why does he have it? He doesn’t need it while he’s serenading Lily.”

“I’m pretty sure he kept it to make sure he could stay alone with her.” 

Sirius snickered. “Ah…” he chuckled. “I see. He wants to get his dick wet in peace without Filch breathing down his neck.”

Wormy’s cheeks reddened, and not because of the winter cold. “That’s… ugh disgusting,” he scoffed, pulling his scarf tighter around him. 

Sirius let out a loud laugh. “Wormy! Just because you’re still a virgin, doesn’t mean James is.”

“I know…” he mumbled, looking away, his brows furrowed and lips pouting. He looked like a squirrel. 

“At some point, you gotta lose that v-card, man,” said Sirius, putting an arm around Wormtail’s shoulders and pulling him towards the Lake. 

The path down there had been cleaned off of snow from the come-and-go from the boots of the previous students, leaving behind a trail of muddy earth. 

“Sirius, I don’t want to talk about this in the open.”

“You’re the last one left to lose it, Wormy.”

Wormtail stopped in his tracks, looking at him with huge eyes. “What?”

“What what?” 

“Last one? When did Remus…” he made a move with his hand. “You know?”

Sirius cackled. “Last year. At the year end party.”

His friend’s brows kept furrowing.

“Didn’t you notice? He disappeared for an hour with Agatha Northon.”

Wormtail made a face. “Her? Really?”

“That’s what I said too,” he revealed. 

Agatha Northon was an ugly seventh year Ravenclaw. Too tall, and no curves. She had long black straight hair that arrived around her hips. Her redeeming qualities were her green doe eyes and her high cheekbones. Sirius had to admit it, he had winced when he had seen Remus go up the stairs to the girl’s room with her, and had winced again when he had seen him come back down. Remus had been beaming with a giddy smile, and had winked at him cheekily as he had pulled up his shirt’s collar to hide a hickey. Sirius’ stomach had cramped, and it had felt like a hippogriff had sat on him. Back then, he had put that reaction on his judgement of his friend’s partner choice. Today… well, he still put it on his judgment. 

With a huff, Wormy kicked a rock. “Really, Northon?”

“Yeah… he could have done Vance instead. She was practically on his lap, but Moony went for Northon.”

“Vance is prettier,” he said. 

“Fuck yeah, sure she is,” howled Sirius. 

Emmeline Vance was a pretty brunette with great tits and nice hips. She was also on the Ravenclaw quidditch team. He had very briefly dated her at the beginning of fifth year and she knew how to give some good head. Too bad she had broken up with Sirius after a month. 

What had she already told him as they had broken up? 

Right.

You’re too focused on your friends. You don’t spend any time with me, other than to just fuck. Merlin knows if I’m your girlfriend or if they are your boyfriends. 

Sirius still didn’t understand why she had been so pent up about him spending time with the Marauders. They were his family, of course he was going to. 

Ah, chicks were so complicated. 

“I can’t believe he went for Northon for his first time,” grumbled Wormy. 

“I think he just didn’t want to finish too quickly, you know? Drag the shag.”

“Still! Her?”

“Dunno, man. You’ll have to ask him why,” snickered Sirius, knowing very well Wormtail would never ask Moony something like that. 

Wormy kicked another stone out of his path, engulfing himself further into his coat, looking deeply thoughtful. 

Sirius had to admit he felt pity for his friend. Mother Nature hadn’t been very benevolent with him: he was chubby and his height, on the shorter side of the spectrum, didn’t help with his weight. Face-wise, his already small brown eyes got lost in the large round canvas that was his face. He lacked a masculine jawline and his dirty blond hair didn’t compliment his complexion. His shy and reticent personality didn’t make him shine when in a room with other people. 

Sirius was pretty sure he wouldn’t have become friends with Wormy if they hadn’t been roommates. “You know,” he said, with a serious tone, “we could throw a party in the Gryffindor common room, and I could arrange for a girl for you.”

Wormtail shot him a dirty look. “No need. I’m not that desperate, Sirius.” He then sighed. “Moreover, it’s not sex that I want.”

Sirius raised his eyebrows. “Really? What is it that you want then?”

But Wormy just shaked his head. “Leave it.”

“Nah, come on! You have to tell me!” he smiled, putting a hand over Wormy’s shoulder and pulling him to his side. “We’re best friends for a reason! You can tell me.”

Wormy looked down to his boots, shoulders raised in defence. “I guess I would like a companion. A life partner.” 

Sirius theatrically threw himself away from his friend with a loud distress moan. “ Naur! James got you too with all his commitment speeches about finding a wife and settling down!” 

Wormy chuckled. “Yeah, maybe.”

Sirius gave him a friendly push, then straightened. “Talking about girlfriends, Snivellus and Sinistra are getting weirdly chummy.”

“How so?”

“After Trans’, Sinistra kept telling Sniv’ to find her at a belfry. Which one, though, I don’t know.” He also told Wormtail what he had heard from their discussion. 

Wormy turned back and eyed the castle. “I think there are like seven or maybe eight belfries at Hogwarts.”

“Well,” hissed Sirius with a mocking smile, “if our dear James hadn’t taken the map for his little date, we could know which one it is.”

“When did they say they were going to meet again?”

“This sunday. However, the weird part is that Sniv’ didn’t look like he wanted to meet her.” 

Wormy shrugged. “We could follow them to their belfry with James’ cape, or…”

Sirius’ ears perked up. “Or?” he grinned. 

“Or we could just sleep because on Monday, first class, we have Trans’ and I don’t want to sleep during it because I want to pass my exams.” 

Sirius groaned, throwing back his head, looking up at the white-grey sky. 

‘And that’s why you’re not my favourite,’ thought Sirius. ‘James would have jumped on the occasion to prank Sniv’ on his little escapade with the Ravenclaw chick.’

Their steps brought them close to the quidditch pitch where the Hufflepuff team was training. They took seats on the stands and watched the seven Hufflepuffs work out. Three of them were doing some laps, while the rest were on their brooms, working out flying techniques. From the heat emanating from them, Sirius understood they were using some very strong warming charms to ward off the cold. 

“You know, we could still throw that party,” he shared, while still watching with a keen eye the flying Hufflepuffs, “for the fun of it.” 

Before Wormy could answer, one of the flying Hufflepuffs lowered to their level and approached them. “If you’re trying to spy our strategies, you’re shit at it, Black,” smiled Anthony Darkwood, raising his fist towards Sirius. 

“As if you goody two-shoes have any strategies worth spying on,” joked back Sirius, bumping the fist with his own. 

Darkwood was a tall, dark skinned sixth year. He was a talented beater, one that Sirius wished was on their team. However, Darkwood had to go and be sorted in Hufflepuff instead of Gryffindor. Oh, well, he truly was a Hufflepuff, proving it with his next words. 

“Hello. Peterson, right?” he asked with a sheepish smile, turning towards Wormy. “Sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.”

“Close enough. Peter Pettigrew,” corrected Wormtail, peeking out of his scarf like a rabbit from a warren. 

“I’ll try to keep it in mind,” said Darkwood, with a genuine smile (one that made all the chicks faint but Darkwood, bless his heart, never noticed it). 

“Darkwood,” called Sirius, getting the Hufflepuff’s attention back, “I think me and the boys are going to throw a party in the Gryffindor common room.”

“You’re still on about that party idea?” gasped Wormy. “Sirius, I told you I don’t— you know—” 

But Sirius cut him. “Next Saturday,” he said. “Not the one this week. The next one.”

Darkwood scratched his nape, looking thoughtful. Then he must have come to a conclusion, because he said: “Yeah, it would be cool. I’ll tell the other ‘Puffs about it.” 

A sudden voice made them look up. “Darkwood!” yelled Thomas Wright, the Hufflepuff quidditch captain. “No time to chit-chat! Come back to training!”

“Aye, aye, captain,” yelled back Darkwood, with a smile stretching his lips. Then he turned towards Sirius and Wormy and tilted his head in acknowledgment. “Black. Pettigrew. I’ll take my leave,” he said, veering his broom away. 

Sirius watched his silhouette as Darkwood flew away, leaving Sirius alone with Wormtail.

“He’s nice,” commented Wormy, digging his head back into his scarf.

“All Hufflepuffs are.”

Wormy hummed, then changed the subject. “Were you serious about the party?” he asked. 

Sirius nodded. “Yeah. It will be nice. We’ll have a good time, and you don’t have to wet your biscuit yet.” 

Wormy slumped his shoulders and sighed. “If you say so.”

They went back inside the castle and spent the rest of the time until dinner in one of the deserted classrooms, first finishing some of their assignments, then playing exploding snap. Wormy wasn’t good at it and Sirius wished James or Moony had been here instead of Wormtail. They were better opponents. 

Dinner went easy, with James and Lily still missing, to which Sirius made dirty jokes that made Moony roll his eyes and redden Wormy’s cheeks. 

It was not until way past curfew that James entered their shared room, looking like the cat that ate the canary. His already bird nest-like hair was wilder, with curls shooting in all directions. The top three buttons of his shirt were buttoned wrong. As if these weren’t enough proof of his activities of the day, he also spotted a huge love bite on his neck. 

Sirius whistled. “Did you get mauled?” he laughed. 

His joke didn’t deter James’ smile. “Sod off,” he grunted, hitting Sirius’ shoulder with a friendly fist. “Nothing can sour my mood. I’m too happy,” he said, as he threw himself on his bed. 

“Someone has been shagging,” sing-sang Sirius, as he put on his pyjamas. 

“Oh, no. We didn’t shag,” huffed James. 

Sirius raised his eyebrows in question. “Really?”

“Yeah. Really,” answered his friend, looking at the canopy of his bed with dreamy eyes. 

“Then why did you even take the map for?” 

“So we wouldn’t get caught, duh.”

Sirius sat on his bed, watching James. “I needed it, you know. Wanted to check where someone was.” Even if the chick and Sniv’ were going to meet on Sunday, he had wanted to know where the chick had gone while skipping class.

James looked at him with raised eyebrows. “Who? Sniv’?”

“Nah. A ravenclaw chick. She’s planning something with Snivellus.”

At that, James sat straight. “ Oh? ”

“We’ll follow them,” explained Sirius with a mischievous smile. “Maybe even send a pimple jinx when he’ll try to kiss her. I already know that they’re going to possibly meet on Sunday–”

James let himself fall back on his bed with a sigh. “I have another date with Lily on Sunday,” he bemoaned. “And you know she wants me to leave that sucker alone. That was like her only condition.”

Sirius pursed his lips. He was pretty sure his friend was more annoyed about missing his date with Lily than missing his chance to accompany his brothers to stop that Slytherin git from soiling a poor girl. 

“You’re breaking the code, James,” he said, as he got under his duvet. 

“What?”

“You heard me.” His voice came out harsher than he intended. On the other side of the room, Wormy looked worried. “It’s bros over hoes.”

James jumped out of his bed and approached him with his shoulders raised high. “You better take that back about Lily.” 

Smelling the storm miles away, and knowing the repercussions his past mishap involving a dirty Slytherin and the full moon had had on his friend group, Sirius wanted to raise his hands placatingly. He wished he could just say ‘Sorry, James’ to his friend, and end the deal there, but Sirius was a prideful Black. 

“It’s just a joke,” he said, rolling his eyes. Wrong move. 

James’ hand tightened around the collar of his shirt. His voice got deep as he approached his face to Sirius’ own. “That hoe is gonna become your sister-in-law. Show some respect,” he grunted. 

Sirius didn’t look away, keeping his eyes locked with those brown ones. Blacks never lowered their gaze, but as much as Sirius loathed his family house, pride had been ingrained to his character from birth. 

What saved him from fist fighting James was the creaky sound of the door handle turning. As Moony emerged into the room, James let him go and moved back to his bed. Wormy, finally taking a breath, slipped out of the room like a little mouse as if James had been angry at him, and not Sirius. 

Moony, as perceptive as ever, noticed immediately that something was awry in the atmosphere, but Sirius didn’t have the energy, nor the desire, to explain him his argument with James, so he just slipped back under his duvet and turned on his side, away from his two friends. 

Whatever. Wormy was sure to keep Moony up to date with what had transgressed tonight once he would be back from wherever he had gone to hide. 

So it’s with a heavy heart, and with the resolution of investigating Snivellus alone, that Sirius let himself fall into Morpheus’ arms.

Chapter 3: Peter and One Strange Meeting

Notes:

Warning, this chapter will tackle internalized homophobia and slight body image problems

Contrary to popular opinion, Peter had already gotten his first kiss. It had happened during his fourth year, when the older Gryffindors had thrown an unauthorised party. And who said unauthorised, said booze and weed. He had kissed Penelope McDougall, who had been high on whatever she had consumed. 

Peter had listened enough times to James and Sirius talking about their romantic accomplishments to know more or less how to kiss… theoretically. But what he had learned from them was that kissing a girl felt like heaven, like being leviosa-ed . 

So when his bare lips had touched Penelope’s, he had expected that sensation of flying Sirius had described. 

He had felt nothing. He could have even said it had been disgusting. He had just felt weird about the wet skin against his own, with some taste of alcohol and marijuana. 

Luckily, Penelope had made the kiss brief and Peter had just excused himself from her presence and left. She had just shrugged and had gone to see some of her friends. 

Now for anyone, a failed first kiss could be bothersome because they had wanted their first to stay as an amazing memory. 

Peter needed his first kiss to be amazing to prove himself he wasn’t gay. 

Gay. Queer. Whatever. 

He needed to be attracted to girls, but all his eyes noticed were the older quidditch players’ toned muscles, sharpening jawlines and deepening voices, how the sun hit on their skins when they worked out, and how their muscles bulged with every contraction. 

He’d even had a wet dream about Anthony Darkwood, sixth year beater for Hufflepuff. Anthony was one Adonis specimen. Tall, large boy with a dark complexion and chestnut eyes, with dimples showing when he smiled. And as nice and kind as he was handsome. 

The wet dream had been a wonderful experience, as far as wet dreams could go. 

In it, he had felt Anthony’s sun kissed skin against his own, his deep baritone voice pronouncing his name and oh, well… It had been a thousand times better than his first kiss with Penelope McDougall. 

If only Anthony would have kissed him… 

But that was just wrong. Boys didn’t want to kiss other boys, unless you were a fag, and Peter wasn’t one, right?

But Peter’s shame didn’t stop at other students. 

He’d had some steamy dreams with his roommates and best friends. 

Remus had been the one who showed up the most, all sweet, all cuddling, making love to him gently. 

The first time it happened, Peter wasn’t able to look Remus in the eye for two straight days. How could he, when his mind had created a fantasy where Remus kissed him and told him sweet nothings as he moved in him? 

No. No. This was bad. Gay thoughts were one thing. But gay thoughts about your best friend? Unacceptable. 

So Peter decided to stick less and less around. Maybe if he stopped being so close to a kind person who actually treated him like a human being instead of the token ugly fat boy of the class, he would stop developing feelings for him. 

It was around early October that he saw the ominous forms at the bottom of his tea cup in Divination class. There sat a bird and a snake, a sword nested between them, pointing up, the handle held by a talon and the snake’s tail. 

His ‘Tea Leaves and their Ominous Meanings’ book by a certain Medius Clairvoyant hadn’t been very helpful. 

Sword: As a weapon forged in metal, the sword represents power, authority, strength and courage. A sword is an aggressive weapon, but can also be used for protection… blah blah blah… Whoever holds the sword, holds the power, as such, if the sword is seen held by an entity, the fortune-teller can safely assume that the one holding the sword has power. If the sword is pointing down, the power is lost or is imminent to be lost. If the sword is pointing up, power will come to the holder. 

And that was mostly it. So someone, or sometwos, were going to receive power. The question was who?

Luckily, the raven section was longer. 

Raven: One couldn’t explain in a few sentences the complexity of the raven’s omen. They usually represent loss and illness. A right facing and flying raven is an incoming misfortune. A left facing and flaying one means misery will be soon past. If the bird’s wings are folded against its body, the approaching sorrow can be easily eluded by the fortune-asking party… 

Well, the raven’s beak pointed right, and his wings were unfolded, stretched big. Peter assumed he could identify the raven as an incoming bad luck, but decided to keep reading. 

A raven coupled with a wolf (p. 394) represents the asking party’s lack of trust in their family and friends. Beware, that mistrust might invite misery… blah blah blah… Ah, there! Seen with a snake (p. 276), the raven’s ill presence couples with treachery, creating an ill fate paved with betrayals. 

Oh, well, if that wasn’t disturbing. However, the next sentence sent a chill down his spin. 

It is recommended for the asking party to seek the truth. 

Sadly, even though the explanation for the raven covered two full pages, nowhere it explained what exactly that truth was, nor what the bird’s meaning could be combined with a sword.

The snake’s description was even more unhelpful. It went on about how the reptilian was a symbol for betrayal and hunger for power. It had one redeeming quality: it also represented medicine, and as such, a snake form could point to healing, but that was the only good comment. Besides, its meaning combined with a raven only sent him back to the bird’s entry. 

In the end, he could attempt to explain his leaves like this: two people were going to gain power, and together, they were going to bring bad luck and betrayals (to whom exactly?) and Peter had to seek the truth. 

Oh well… maybe Sirius was right, maybe divination was just pure rubbish and a waste of time. 

But that raven and snake and sword kept appearing in his tea cups, every class, without fail, even if Peter tried to drink his tea differently every time. At some point, he even suspected it might be a prank, but as a principle, the Marauders never pulled pranks on each other, but other than James or Sirius, no one else who would want to play him came to mind. 

Around early November, one month after these tea leaf visions had started, the forms in his cup changed. Now a raven was hunting what looked like a mouse, or even worse: a rat. 

Peter had left the divination classroom and for two weeks straight, had avoided it. Professor Antonio D’Orazio being a hippie, when he questioned Peter about his absences, had easily accepted his excuses with a smile. Peter had just told the teacher the classroom’s vibes had been off, to which D’Orazio had nodded and told him chewing a few datura buds would help with it. 

Peter hadn’t followed the advice, not wanting to die, but he begrudgingly had started attending classes again. 

He had tried sharing his problem with the other Marauders, but James had just shrugged and Sirius had laughed, telling him that divination was rubbish and that he was just giving meaning to a few tea leaves that had happened to make forms by accident. Only Remus had tried to calm him down, telling him that maybe the forms were something else and that he had just looked them up wrong in his book. Remus’ hand on his shoulder had burned and his smile had made his insides squirm, and Peter, the coward he was, had just nodded and left the room under an excuse, not even thanking Remus for being supportive. 

And now, he was back in his divination classroom, teacup hanging from his chubby fingers, the tea leaves blurry due to his eyes refusing to focus on anything. 

His mind kept thinking about Sirius’s revelation a few days ago: Remus and Northon, how he must have held her, kissed her neck and cheeks as he made love to her, silenced her moans with his lips, hands caressing all of her skin. 

Peter would never know how it would feel. And that wrenched his guts, tying his stomach in ten different knots. 

He would never know… 

It suddenly hit him. Never . 

Never meant not ever . 

Until the day he would die, he would never know Remus intimately. 

Until the day he would die, Remus’ kisses, his skin… his touch would be barred to him. 

And suddenly, Peter couldn’t keep his tears at bay. They poured out of his eyes, rolling over his cheeks and falling from his chin into his damned tea cup. His nose stuffed, his shoulders shook with his cries. 

A hand landed on his shoulder, and when he turned to look to whom it belonged, he could make out Richard Miller through his tears. 

“Hey, Pettigrew, you alright?” his classmate asked, face scrunched up in confusion. 

No.

“Y-yes…” he mumbled, drying his eyes and cheeks with his sleeve. “It’s just… got some sad news from the mail this morning,” he lied. “A great aunt of mine passed away.” The excuse was simple, but one that easily worked. 

Miller’s confused look turned into concern. “My condolences,” he whispered. “Is– is there anything I could do to help?”

Peter shook his head, smiling sadly. “Thank you, but no… not really. You know how it is… I need time to…”

“Yes, of course!” Miller nodded in agreement. “Everybody needs time to mourn the loss of a loved one.”

Mourn . It sounded so fitting. Peter needed to mourn the loss of Remus, but could it be even seen as a loss, when he never ever had Remus to begin with? 

Remus had never been his. Gentle, loving Remus… the only one who treated him with respect, talked with him and listened to his opinions, that saw more than just the rat. 

“Yeah,” he grunted, taking a deep breath. “I need time…” 

–

Peter didn’t cry again for the day, but his mood didn’t get better either. The sadness he had felt for his condition during the morning class left its place to bitterness against Agatha Northon. 

Really? Her? That ugly duckling? 

Peter wasn’t delusional, he knew he wasn’t handsome like Sirius, striking like James, or charming like Remus, or even half decent looking like half of the school’s male population. Peter knew he was ugly. He wasn’t an idiot either, to the dismay of many. Thinking that Remus would have stayed a virgin bachelor until death would have been stupid. 

But he had expected better. Remus was good looking: many girls would have accepted him. Heck! Sirius had told him that Emmeline Vance had been openly interested in Remus, and Vance was one attractive girl. Pretty sure many boys in the school had done their nightly business while thinking about her. 

So why had Remus gone for that ugly girl? 

In Peter’s head, it made no sense. 

However, even if Peter himself couldn’t see the appeal in that girl, and he could think Remus was mental for going for her, it didn’t change the facts. 

Subjectively, Remus had shitty taste.

Objectively, he still had ended up having sex with her. 

And even if Peter went on and on about his friend’s poor choice in a bed partner, it didn’t change the fact Remus had fucked her. 

He had fucked Agatha Norton, and his debatable reasons for it were not important next to the outcome. 

Next to the sorrow nestled deep in Peter’s chest, rage started simmering, alighting his nerves and burning his ribs. He’d told his friends to go to dinner without him, giving them the excuse of not feeling great. 

“I don’t know,” he had lied through his teeth to his friends, “might be a stomach bug.”

Sirius had gently patted his shoulder while passing near him to leave the room. James had told him to not hesitate to bother Pomfrey if his condition got worse. And Remus, his kind friend, had promised he would bring him tonight’s dessert after the meal, knowing it was Peter’s favourite. 

It’s with that lie that Peter made his way to the library, deciding to borrow a few books to help with his homework while he was going to study and ruminate his sadness at the same time in their dorm room. 

At this hour, the library was deserted, everybody having gone to eat dinner. Even Miss Pince was missing. 

Peter made his way through the bookshelves, greeted with that iconic dusty book smell. He searched for a particular Transfiguration book that could help him, but even after checking five times the section dedicated to McGonagall’s subject, he couldn’t find ‘ Transfiguration Laws for Second Years ’. As a sixth year student, it was a bit embarrassing that he had to consult books for kids that had just started learning about magic, but Peter just couldn’t keep information in his head. All the mumble jumble about his different classes evaporated from his brain after the first twenty-four hours of him hearing them. The exception was Divination, for which Peter guessed instincts played a bigger role than precision to do it correctly, but even that subject was becoming harder for him, with not being able to correctly make out his tea leaves for months now.

Those bloody ravens and snakes and swords and mice…

Engulfed in his thoughts, Peter reached for a book placed on an upper shelf, standing on his tippy-toes. As his fingers brushed the old spine and his fingertips grabbed the book, a hand engulfed his and pulled the book out of his place. 

Peter jerked away as if burned. Next to him, another student was standing, book in hand. In the badly lit library, it was hard to decipher the colours of his robes, but Peter spied blue on the edge of his cuffs. A head taller than him, the Ravenclaw boy stood with his back straight. He had a diamond face, with high cheekbones, a straight nose with a slightly raised bridge and deep set brown eyes. He made eye contact with him and Peter couldn’t stop himself from finding him beautiful. As he had that thought, a sharp pain speared his head and Peter turned away from the Ravenclaw and held his head. 

“Ugh,” he grunted, massaging his temples. 

“Are you alright?” asked the boy. 

Within a moment, Peter let his hands fall away from his face. The pain had left as quick as it had come. “Ugh, yeah,” he mumbled. “Sudden headache,” he explained. He felt the air crackle with some magic. What the fuck?

The boy nodded, then held out the book for him. “Sorry. Here, the book. Guess you can have it, I mean, you did try to reach for it before me.”

Peter eyed the old tome. “You need the Transfiguration book for Second Years too?” He knew he was stupid, and that a few others in the school weren’t faring much better than him, but a Ravenclaw?

The boy made an aborted noise, quickly checked the cover of the book, and made a nervous smile. “Uh, sometimes going back to the bases is needed.”

“Right…” drawled Peter, taking the book from his hands. Oh, well, who was he to judge?

He nervously looked around, waiting for the boy to leave so he could keep foraging for books, but the Ravenclaw was still glued in front of him. 

“Do you need another book?” The boy asked. “I could reach them for you.” 

Now, this coming from a Hufflepuff, Peter would completely put this whole interaction on their kind character. But he hadn’t expected this much camaraderie from an unknown Ravenclaw. 

However, Peter also just wanted to be done with all of this and go to his bedroom to cry the remnant of his heartache in peace. So he nodded and pointed to a random book on the higher shelf. “I need that red one too,” he said, just to be done with this whole interaction. The sooner he accepted the boy’s help, the sooner he would be on his way out of the library. 

The boy nodded, and reached for the book, pulling it out. He gently dusted it before reading its title. “ Subtle Shifts and The Alchemy of Aetherial Malleability: The Intricacies of Micro-Transfigurative Phenomena in Non-Sentient Matter, ” he read, raising his eyebrows. “Isn’t this book for masteries?” he asked, and whether dime light or not, Peter could see the small playful smirk on his lips. 

‘Couldn’t have chosen a more perfect book, idiot,’ he thought. “Ugh, yeah,” he mumbled, unabashedly holding out his hand for the book. 

The boy eyed his movement, then slowly gave him the tome. “Anything else?” he asked. 

Peter shrugged. “No. Nothing else, and thanks,” he said, gesturing for the red book in his hand. ‘I guess,’ he wanted to add but bit his tongue at the last moment. “I… I should go,” he said, scratching his nape. “Thanks again,” he whispered as he sidestepped the boy and left the aisle. 

A few steps later, he turned to look back and saw the boy standing there, watching him. Noticing him, he waved him bye. Peter gulped and waved back, then turned back around and started walking faster. 

Quickly, he made it to the library door and pushed it open with way more force than it needed. 

As he stepped out, the two books glowed red and an alarm started blazing. 

Ugh, he hadn’t checked them out! 

Peter let his head fall, and took a deep breath, then walked back into the library. The moment he was fully back in, the alarm stopped but the books’ unnatural light didn’t disappear. 

Peter glanced at Miss Pince’s desk, where the Ravenclaw was standing now, with raised eyebrows and a judging gaze. 

Peter nervously smiled. “Ugh, forgot to check them out,” he announced, holding out the glowing books as if to prove it. 

“I can see that,” the other boy commented, eyeing the bundle in Peter’s arms. “Could hear it too a few moments ago.” 

“Yeah,” he nervously whispered, then made his way to Pince’s desk. There, Peter quickly pulled out a pack of papers.

In the deafening silence of the library, his shuffling of the papers sounded loud, and it felt like it was noisy enough to raise the dead. Once the correct form was pulled, he started filling it, under the watchful (albeit unwanted) eyes of the Ravenclaw. The scratching sound of the quill against the paper blared like thunder, raising up all his fine hairs in fright, and the eyes he could feel on him weren’t helping. 

Peter was so ready to just be done with all of this. 

Once done writing the date, hour and the names of the two books and his own, he straightened up and grabbed the now, thank Merlin, unglowing tomes, and looked at the Ravenclaw. 

The boy had one hip against the desk, arms crossed, and was watching Peter silently. 

“Ugh… I’m done,” he smiled. 

“I can see that.” 

Peter nodded, looking away, licking his lips nervously. “And ugh… yeah, thanks again, mate…” he muttered, walking backwards and gesturing towards the Transfiguration aisle, “for the help, you know… yeah.” 

And with those words, he turned back around and made his way out of the library for the second time. Thankfully, no alarm or red lights assaulted him this time, and his walk to the Gryffindor tower lacked any other perturbing Ravenclaw student. 

Back in his room, he quickly discarded the books on his desk and let himself fall on his bed. He first let out a deep sigh, then massaged his eyes with his palms. 

What. The. Fuck.

It wasn't a question anymore. It was a statement. 

Huffing, he got back on his feet and gathered his bathing supplies. While the others were eating, the shower stalls would be empty, and Peter wanted that hot water for himself for a bit. And also because he didn’t like to be naked in front of his peers. When two of your friends had six pack abs from Quidditch training, and the other one was good looking because werewolf genes came with the added bonus of having great muscle mass, and the rest of your school house being physically fairly decent, you quickly realised how unflattering your belly rolls were. 

But tonight, as Peter didn’t have to hide his rolls from the other showering students, he could freely let himself think about the interaction in the library. 

What was that boy doing there? Why had he struck up a conversation with him? 

Suddenly, as showers usually did it, a thought crossed Peter’s mind. 

Maybe he had been put here by Pince herself? Maybe she had asked the Ravenclaw to watch the library in her absence? Is that why the boy had tried to help him and hadn’t left his side? Is that why he had watched him while filling the form?

It had to be that, or what could it be otherwise? 

Yeah, it had to. Clearly, Pince had asked the boy, and the boy was doing his job. Maybe, he had even gotten a bit bored and had decided to amuse himself by frightening Peter. 

He could see that happening. A lone and bored student deciding to pick on him just for some laugh. Yeah, at the end of the day, the boy was going to go to Ravenclaw tower and was surely going to recount to his friends in his dorm room how he had scared a Gryffindor for the shits-and-giggles of it. 

Yeah, no problem, whatever. Peter shouldn’t think about it that much. In the end, it wasn’t that important. 

Yeah, he had met a barmy Ravenclaw in the library? And what? Not like anything had really happened. In the end, Peter was back in Gryffindor tower safe and sound, with an extra book he didn’t need, but that was just a trivial worry at this point. 

It’s with these thoughts that he went to sleep, too shaken by the day to even attempt to do any homework, or mop about his one sided crush.

Chapter 4: Severus and One Intense Birthday

Notes:

Forgive me for the lateness, but I decided to re-edit the chapter last minute before posting, because I wasn't 100% happy with it. It's still not to my liking, but eh, I don't want to make any of you wait any longer <3

The week passed on quickly, and before Severus could notice it, it was already Saturday night. 

Sinistra had kept to herself during the week, not bothering him at all. However, her last words to him on that Monday morning still rung in his ears. She had looked so sure he would meet her. For answers, she had said, but answers to what? Severus’ only question was why Sinistra kept bothering him. 

He spent his day in the Common Room, sitting on the couch before the giant fireplace, letting it warm him, since the dungeons got chilly during the winter and he lacked thick enough clothes. He also sat there to avoid any Gryffindor or Ravenclaw, but as the clock approached midnight, suddenly Regulus Black propped down next to him on the couch. 

The fire in the hearth illuminated his face, making his short curly hair shine and shadows play on his aristocratic face. High cheekbones, straight nose, sharp jawline, Regulus Black was a handsome young man, like his brother. For inbred kids, mother nature had privileged them with their physics. 

Severus didn’t like either Blacks. The oldest he hated, the youngest he was indifferent to. 

“Yes?” asked Severus, noticing the folded piece of paper in Black’s hand. 

“For you,” said Black, thrusting the paper towards him. “Next time, do tell Sinistra I’m not an owl.” And before Severus could do anything, Black threw the paper at him and left promptly. 

After some confusion, Severus unfolded the paper.

‘First door password: Betelgeuse / Wand movement: circle clockwise

Trapdoor password: Venus / Wand movement: horizontal eight, starting with the left loop’  

Outside, far away, a church bell rang midnight. 

And suddenly, everything flooded inside Severus’ brain. 

—

He was running towards the owlery, but as he came close to it, he passed by and stopped in front of the door leading to the Belfry. 

“Be-betelgeuse,” he hissed, making a circle with his wand. The door promptly opened. He ran up the stairs and yelled “Venus!” to the trapdoor with the according wand movement. 

He sent the trapdoor flying back and emerged into the Belfry with hast. 

“Explain,” he yelled, as he took into the state of the room. Nothing had really changed. 

Interestingly, Sinistra was preparing a cake with candles. “You came earlier than expected,” she said, smiling. “Hi! Welcome!” And she lit the candles with the tip of her wand. 

“Explain!” he screamed, marching towards her. “How? How did you–?” 

“Sit down, and I’ll explain,” she said, with a strict voice, like the one of a teacher. 

Severus shuddered but obeyed, letting himself fall on the cushions in front of her. Between them, the candles started melting. 

“So I can assume you remember?” she said, pushing the cake plate towards him. 

Severus ignored it. “Yes… I… yes,” he mumbled, eyes darting around in confusion. 

“Can I ask up until when?” She got up and filled two cups with tea and brought them over.

“Until– the Shrieking Shack.”

The Shack. 

Voldemort.

Nagini.

“The Shrieking Shack…,” he repeated. “I was dying…” he explained, suddenly breathless. 

She nodded, sipping her tea. “Hmmm. Yes. I did the ritual then.”

“Ritual? What ritual?” He squinted his eyes, as if he could identify the answer by just looking at her. They had been in the middle of a battle, in the middle of a war.  

“What do you think?” she said, gesturing between the two of them. 

“You did this…” 

At midnight, as the 8th had ended and the 9th of January had started, all the memories of a peculiar future had flooded Severus: his marking, the war, Lily dying…

Lily was dead. 

Wait! No…

Was she?

“What are those things I remember?” he asked, looking at Sinistra pleadingly. Severus knew she held the answers in her hands. She had been right. Severus had met her at the Belfry, willingly, to get answers. 

“They are the memories of our older selves, what they went through, and what we are supposed to go through.”

“But–”

“But now that we know what will happen, we can stop it. We can put an end to all of it, Severus,” she hissed, leaning towards him. “We. Can. Save. Them.”

And suddenly, it all made sense. “Charity,” he whispered, as the image of her lifeless body floating on a large table flashed in his mind. “You…”

“Yes,” she answered, straightening back. “Charity, but also Lily. You love her, don’t you?”

“I do…” he confessed, and suddenly he couldn’t help the tears that ran down his cheeks. 

Sinistra sighed, and pushed the plate towards him again. The candles had almost burned down completely, melting all over the cake. 

“Do make a wish, Severus,” she said, a sad smile on her lips. “And let’s talk about all of this with some cake and tea.” 

Severus eyed the candles, then, as if a force from outside of his body pushed him, he gently blew on them. Later on, he would understand he was going through shock and having an out-of-body experience.

But for now, all he could think about was that… he had never been religious, and wishes never worked for him. However, as he took the kitchen knife and started cutting the cake down, he thought: ‘Whatever hell this is, let Lily live this time.’

“Happy birthday,” whispered Sinistra, as she pulled a box that she had been hiding behind her. “Here, it’s not much, but I only could prepare this on such a short notice.”

“What is it?” he asked, taking the box in his hands.

“Your birthday gift, of course!”

Severus put it aside. “Before that, tell me: how many people do remember the future like us?”

“Only the two of us. I only did the ritual for us.”

“Why me?”

“Because I knew you would help me,” she revealed, placing cake slices on two mismatching plates. “Because I know how much you love Lily, like I love Charity. Do tell me you’re not going to act. Do tell me you’re going to join that motherfucker and betray Lily again. Do tell me!”

Severus pursed his lips. The sensible thing to do would be to do nothing, treat those new memories like they never existed, let the course of fate run as it should. 

Clearly sensing his thoughts, Sinistra whispered: “Can you mourn her again?”

Severus jolted. “What?”

“Can you mourn her again, Severus?” she repeated, voice cold. “Because right now, Lily Evans is alive.”

It cut Sverus’ heart in two. Lily was alive. His one and only friend, the only girl he had ever loved… alive. He hadn’t sinned yet. He hadn’t… Oh, Merlin. She could live on until old age. Become a proper mother, and even grandmother, live her dreams, go to the States for her mastery like she wished. 

“She’s doing really well, isn't she? Stressed about the upcoming year-end exams and the lil’ zit on her forehead, but that’s it,” continued Sinistra, planting the invisible knife deeper into his heart. “She’s full of life–”

“I get it!” he yelled, drying his tears with his sleeve. “I get it!” 

“Good, because now I need you to understand that we’re going to kill that bloody Voldemort, alright?”

He nodded, still shocked, still overwhelmed by all the memories his occlumency shields weren’t able to keep at bay. They were like water, slipping into his consciousness by leaking through the cracks of his mental walls. 

“How?” he mumbled. “We’re just two teenagers!”

“True, but we have something no one else does. We know the future. We already know every one of their steps.”

“That won’t be enough,” he hissed, a sob escaping through his lips. 

“Indeed,” she acknowledged. “That’s why I’m gonna keep looking at the stars.”

“Stars?” yelled Severus. “Seriously? We’re going to plan our future with stars?”

“Like it or not, heavenly bodies do tell us a lot of information when one knows how to interpret their trajectories.”

“That’s like divination! Pure rubbish!”

With an unmatchable quickness, Sinistra caught his collar. “Do not dare insult my subject, Snape! I did two masteries on it. I might have become a teacher later than you, but I am a qualified person about astrology!”

“Okay, whatever,” he snapped, pushing her away, remembering that yes, he would become a teacher in this castle if he left fate unattended. Sinistra released his collar after a moment, but her sneer didn’t disappear. 

“Now, of course, stars won’t be enough, I do admit that. That’s why I got you that gift,” she told him, pointing to the box he had discarded. 

Severus took it back in his hand. It was a medium sized box but quite heavy. It was wrapped with the previous weeks’ The Prophet, and tied with a blue ribbon. 

“Thanks…” he mumbled. It had been years since someone other than Lily had bought him anything for his birthday. When he was sixth his mum had given him a small notebook with a small pack of crayons and his dad a football ball, back when Tobias still had his job at the mill, when bills didn’t pile up in the mailbox, when his parents managed to keep their arguing to whispers after sending him to bed. 

Until last year, only Lily had kept giving him gifts. They weren’t big things, quite small but it had been the thought behind that had counted: a new quill, some potion vials, socks etc… nothing fancy, because Lily knew he didn’t like flashy stuff.

As he pulled on the ribbon and unwrapped all the newspaper, he opened the cardboard box to reveal…

Another box. A rectangular wooden one, way smaller. He took it and noticed something else was at the bottom of the box: a book. He pulled it out too. 

“Go on, open the box. Then you can look at the book,” instructed Sinistra, smiling. 

He did as told. Inside was a pack of cards. The painting of a young man foolishly walking at the edge of a cliff with a small white dog behind him greeted Severus. 

“Tarot? Seriously?”

“Yes. Learn to use them.”

“You can’t be serious,” he growled. “This is worse than astrology.” 

Sinistra took the book and held it out for him. “Tarot is one of the only times muggles can also use magic, because contrary to spells and artefacts, tarot cards use only the magic surrounding us in very few quantities, instead of the one a person emanates.”

“Still,” he said, yanking the book from her hand and looking at it. ‘The Key to the Tarot’ by a certain Rider Waite. From its battered edges, he could understand the book was second hand. “I am no seer. It won’t work.”

“Muggles make it work, and they definitely are no seers,” she kept going. “Listen, do you have a better idea?”

Severus kept silent. 

“See?” she said. “To be honest with you, Severus, if you do have one, do share it. I’m open to anything that could help us, but for now, this is all I can think of.”

Severus nodded. He didn’t believe the cards were going to work at all, but if in any way, they could even help them a little bit to win against the Dark Lord, he was going to take the chance. He wasn’t going to lose Lily again. 

“Go on,” said Sinistra, gesturing towards the two cake plates. “It’s yours.”

It was some plain cake with candles all melted on top of it. “When did you make this?” he asked. 

“The elves did. I sadly didn’t have time for it. I was busy trying to get you the cards.”

Severus nodded. This whole evening had been so chaotic. He had gotten the memories of his future self, learned about his love’s death, his own and–

And Harry Potter’s. 

Lily’s boy. 

“Now you tell me you have been raising him like a pig for slaughter–”

“Have you grown to care for the boy, after all?” 

Dumbledore’s voice had been stable, almost calculating. He had told him that Harry’s death by Voldemort’s hand was essential, the only way of defeating him. 

There was a prophecy, right? One that he only had heard the beginning of. 

The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches... 

An unfinished prophecy. One that would send Voldemort to the Potter’s threshold. 

Only if Severus informed the Dark Lord about it. 

“There…” he whispered. 

“Hm?” grunted Sinistra, mouth full of cake. She had already started eating her share.

“There was a prophecy…”

“What do you mean?” she asked, frowning her eyebrows. 

“Trelawney,” he explained, “she made— no, will . She will make a prophecy.”

Sinistra put down her plate. “Do you know it?”

“Only the beginning, but it…”

“It ‘ what’ , Severus?”

“It started everything.”

Sinistra nodded, looking thoughtful. “What was it, then?”

“ The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches... born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies…” he cited, surprised he knew it by heart. 

“Hm. When was it made?”

“January or February… 1980? Maybe it was March but I don’t think so,” he explained

“So, Trelawney made you that prophecy?”

“No, she did it for Dumbledore.”

Sinistra furrowed her brows even further. “What do you mean? Then how did you learn about it?”

“I… spied on them, for the Dark Lord, but I only heard the first part.”

“Why not the second?” she asked, clearly not bothered by his confession of being a Death Eater. 

Did she already know? After the war, his status as a spy had been made public, right? His memories were too much in shambles to answer that. 

“Sev?” she prompted.

He ignored the nickname, and searched the chaos that was his newly acquired memories to find out, indeed, why hadn’t he heard the end of the prophecy. “The owner of the Hog’s Head caught me and threw me out,” he explained in a breath. 

“Aberforth Dumbledore,” supplied Sinistra.

“What?”

“The owner of the Hog’s head is Aberforth Dumbledore.”

“The goat fucker?” he asked with a genuine voice, furrowing his brows.

Sinistra spit out her tea, and after a beat, started furiously laughing while holding her sides. “The fuck?” she half-shrieked, half-cackled, and then she made a pig sound and a new wave of laughter started. 

“Sinistra…” he huffed, but couldn’t stop himself from smiling a little bit. 

“I— I just wasn’t expecting that,” she giggled, and then let herself fall to the floor, cushions breaking the harsh impact.

“Anyway,” he kept going, “now that you mention it, they do look alike.”

“Hmm, but let’s go back to the prophecy,” she said, straightening back up. “Why did you bring it up?”

“The prophecy was about Harry Potter. He’s the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord.”

Sinistra looked away, eyes thoughtful. “You know,” she mumbled, “prophecies are wild cards. Some are bound to happen, told aloud or not, but some are self-fulfilling, meaning, them being believed by one is enough for them to happen. Now, the question is, which type of prophecy was Trelawney’s one?”

Severus sighed. “That, I don’t know… I… I told— will tell— the Dark Lord about it, and he thought… will think it’s about Harry Potter…”

She tapped the floor with her finger, clearly thinking. “You said it was prophesied in the early 1980?”

“Yeah.”

“Hmm… so you told him and he went after the Potters.”

Severus nodded. His memories of the future were taking place in his mind like a second skin, overlapping his other souvenirs. They were shifting and moulding, fitting themselves in. An hour ago, his mind had been a tempest, now the weather had settled a bit. 

“So the prophecy might have been self-fulfilled with him trying to kill Harry… or Harry was always supposed to end up vanquishing against Voldemort… but in the end, that’s not important.”

“What? What do you mean it’s not important? Do you know how many people died—” Right… people had died for that prophecy. Lily… James Potter… Black was one… Sirius Black… he was also going to die… 

“It’s not important because whether the prophecy is self-fulfilling or not, we’re going to take down Voldemort before the prophecy will be made. Let’s say it was made in January 1980. That means until then, we have three years in front of us. Three years to defeat him.”

“But what if only Harry Potter—”

“Then we’ll make sure that Lily stays alive. All of them. My priority is Charity, but I will help you about Lily. I will.”

Severus nodded, half lost, half scarred into what he was walking in. This was going to be no easy feat. How was he going to kill the Dark Lord and eliminate his followers with just the help of an astrology girlie? 

“So what do we do first?” he asked, picking at his cake. 

“Well, for now, we research. Before you remembered things, I tried to do some information gathering, but other than Crouch Junior, no one in Ravenclaw seems interested in the Death Eater circle,” she explained, taking a second slice of cake. “I tried to befriend him, but he wasn’t keen on my blood status.” 

“Crouch…” whispered Severus. “Wait, your blood status? Are you muggleborn?”

“Nope. I’m a halfblood. Pureblood father and muggle mother,” she revealed.

“Like me…” he whispered.

“Like you? I know you’re a halfblood but—”

“Pureblood mother and muggle father.”

“Oh… well… that’s interesting,” she muttered, and then smiled. “Look at us, two half-bloods planning to take down a pureblood cult.” She raised her teacup in a mock salute, and held it up to him for a toast. “To halflings.”

Severus nodded, a bit overwhelmed by all that happened to him since midnight, and clinked their teacups. “To halflings,” he repeated. 

They drank their tea, and ate Severus’ birthday cake, and at some point, Sinistra brought to him a large sheet of paper full of writings, with a large wheel-like symbol in the center of it. 

“What’s this,” he asked.

“Your birth chart,” she answered. “Look at this, Capricorn sun, Cancer moon and Scorpio Ascendant. Oh, you’re a nice mix, Sev.” 

Severus tried to think about the signs he had learned in Astrology during all his years, but other than just saying the crab one was a water sign, nothing came to his mind. “I still don’t understand why you did this,” he said. “How is this going to help me?”

“Eh…” she drawled, “It’s mostly helping me,” she admitted. 

“How?”

“Oh, well, now I know that you’re a bloke that puts on a tough guy mask, but deep down you’re sensitive and want to be loved.”

Severus furrowed his brows. “Ha. Ha,” he deadpanned. “So funny, Sinistra.” 

She chuckled, then pointed to a part of the chart. “See this, it’s your North Node. It represents one's life path and spiritual growth. It’s in Aries, which means that in order for you to thrive, you need to learn to be assertive, that you need to stop desiring approval from others. And once you learn to be independent, that’s when you’ll be happy”

Independence. In Severus’ future, there was no place for that. He would swing from one master to the other, and he would never be free, youth lost on the path of seeking validation from purebloods. 

Independence. 

“What else is this chart saying?” he asked. 

“It mostly details your personality,” she summarised. “For us to know what to do, when to do, I need to prepare monthly reports, but this chart will come in handy while doing that.”

“Kinda like those daily horoscope pages in magazines?”

“Oh, please, those are just a bunch of bumf. Never trust them ever.” Her nose scrunched up in disgust as she put away the chart.

“If you say so,” he muttered, sipping his tea. 

“Those horoscope statements are so general, it could be applied to a random murtlap and it would still fit the bill. No, I’m going to do some personalised stuff for us.”

Severus nodded, then took in his hands his birthday gift. He started shuffling the cards, looking at the different line engraving drawings of people holding either swords, wands, cups or talismans. There was one card with a devil holding two people chained, another one with a baby riding a horse with a giant sun in the background, and finally one with a horse-riding skeleton holding a black flag with a flower emblem. ‘Death’ said the card. The Grim Reaper. 

“You know, that card doesn’t really represent death itself,” commented Sinistra.

Severus looked up. “Hmm?”

“The ‘Death’ card is the card of endings. Depending on the question, it could mean the end of a love story, or of a job, or even of a period of time.”

“Endings,” he whispered. “Then it can also represent the end of a life,” he murmured, looking in her eyes. 

She glanced away, pursing her lips, then nodded. “It can.”

They spent the rest of the hour finishing the cake in silence and they left the belfry together, one headed in the direction of the Ravenclaw tower, the other one down to the dungeons. But before separating, Sinistra squeezed his shoulder and leaned towards him. In the moonlight filtering through the old windows, he suddenly could see the flecks of her blue kohl that had fallen on her cheekbones. “Thanks,” she said.

“For?”

“For not turning me away,” she answered. “For deciding to help me out with this mission.”

He scoffed. “I’m not doing it for you.”

She giggled, and leaned even further towards him. Her jasmine scented perfume caressed his nostrils as she smiled. “I know,” she said, then, as quick as a hawk, planted a kiss on his cheek and stepped away. “Happy Birthday, Severus,” she remarked with warmth, then turned away and skipped towards her tower, leaving a gobsmacked Severus all alone, in the middle of the hallway. 

He stayed there, immobile, one hand against his kissed cheek, watching the last spot she had been visible before disappearing behind a corner, until the Hufflepuff head boy found him and sent him back to his dorm with minus twenty points from Slytherin.

Chapter 5: Remus and One Big Lie

Notes:

I'm so sorry for the delay in posting this chapter. I just got back from travelling

Also, I had to go and search for 70s rock bands lol

Many people thought the wolf was separate from him. They were wrong. The wolf was him, and he was the wolf, for the simple reason that ‘the wolf’ did not really exist. He didn’t have to share his body with another being. He was just one person: Remus John Lupin. 

And Remus John Lupin happened to be a werewolf. He wasn’t like other humans. His senses were greater, and with every full moon, his physical being changed, becoming one of a wolf, but Remus John Lupin was still that wolf. Half-amnesic and unrestrained, led by instincts, that being that roamed the Forbidden Forest was no one but Remus John Lupin. The werewolf didn’t inhabit his thoughts like a second person, pushing him to act with his canine instincts. That was all Remus. Remus and his own thoughts and instincts. 

However, Remus knew that the moment people learned no actual wolf lived inside him to come out one night per month, they would be scared of him, understanding that Remus wasn’t the kind young man who had the curse of sharing a body with a monster. They would understand he was the monster. 

His friends didn’t know that. They thought poor Remus had to deal with a wolf once a month, that at least it came with the bonus of good hearing.

It wasn’t the case. 

The first time he had met Dumbledore, telling him he could attend Hogwarts, and that him being a werewolf shouldn’t define him, Remus had wanted to believe him. Eleven and friendless, unknown pariah, a promise of a permanent school life for seven years had elated him. 

But adapting to Hogwarts and to what will once be named the Shrieking Shack was hard, and hiding his monthly disappearances from his roommates harder. For the first time, Remus had gotten stable friendships that didn’t dissolve after a few months because his family had to move around due to his condition. 

So yes, when his new friends discovered his werewolf status, and instead of recoiling with disgust, they asked him questions about it, he lied.

“The wolf is separate from me. It only comes out during full moons,” he had said, hoping it would make him look less monstrous.

He knew his friends’ probability of meeting another werewolf was very low, so he didn’t fear getting caught. And if he did, he hoped his friendship with them was strong enough they would forgive him. 

Alas, last year, Sirius did something stupid, and now Remus kept second guessing everything. Why had Sirius sent Severus to him, knowing Remus wouldn’t be able to rein himself in? When he fully transformed into a werewolf, Remus involuntarily gave fully into his instincts. Instincts that screamed to him to bite and devour any human being that would encroach on his territory. 

Deep down, he knew Sirius was sorry for what he did, and Remus wanted to just forgive him and go on with his life but… he surely would have forgiven Sirius if it had been anyone except Severus.

The Slytherin was sitting two rows before him, shiny straight hair caressing his nape, eagerly noting down Binns’ explanations of a certain goblin war. 

In all earnest, Remus didn’t give two shits about History, but this class was the only one he shared exclusively with Severus, since none of the Marauders had wanted to expose themselves to Binns’ boring voice. So History had become his secret little heaven where he could indulge himself.

Severus, as the school’s pariah, was going through what Remus should have. Severus was just a halfblood young man interested in dark arts. Remus was a monster. 

But to Remus’ surprise, Severus never hid his unwelcome side from anyone. He lived his truth, even if it drew others’ hate to him. He had this insolent courage to him, this tenacity that Remus envied him. Getting sorted into Slytherin while being a half-blood demanded a type of – paradoxically – Gryffindor-ish courage. 

Multiple times James and Sirius attacked him, and Severus never backed down, even after losing his only friend, he went on with his head held high. While Remus was some kind of delicate garden flower, Severus was the street weed no one could get rid off. 

And Remus John Lupin was in love with Severus. 

Had been for a long time now. He didn’t know when it exactly started, but he was sure it developed over time, as he watched him more and more. A monster watching an innocent get branded as the monster. 

He always imagined leaving Hogwarts, free of house rivalry, finding Severus in the adult world and mending his relationship with him and maybe one day… winning over his heart. However, that might never happen, because of the coming of a war with a dangerous cult called the Death Eaters. Right and left people were dying, and rumours had it the Slytherins were getting roped into that cult. And everybody knew, rumours were like smoke: they didn’t exist without fire. 

Most of the Sacred Twenty-eight’s children were in Slytherin, and most knew the Sacred Families upheld radical ideologies about the wizarding world and muggles. It could be summed up very easily: muggles and their descendants shouldn’t enter the wizarding world. 

And rumours were that Severus was adhering to their ideologies. A half-blood! Severus’ blood wasn’t pure, everyone knew it from how his housemates called him ‘halfling’ sometime. 

What could he see in that organisation, Remus wondered constantly. What could it offer him, he asked himself everytime he saw him alongside other blood purist Slytherins. 

That’s with those questions that he left the classroom once the class was done. At the threshold, Sinistra was waiting, back against the old stone, absentmindedly checking her nails. 

A body passed by him and Remus instinctively followed him with his eyes. Severus went and greeted Sinistra with a small nod. 

“I can’t believe you’re taking History,” complained Sinistra. 

“Why are you waiting here? I told you that we shouldn’t be seen together,” whispered Severus, and no one but Sinistra would have heard him, if only Remus hadn’t had enhanced hearing. 

To Severus’ complaint, Sinistra gave him a cheeky smile. 

Remus’ mood soured. 

He had noticed Sinistra turning around Severus for months now (hell, even Sirius had, with him whining like a sad puppy when he hadn’t been able to follow them around last Sunday), but until this week, the Slytherin hadn’t really given her any attention. Maybe he should have followed Sirius’ wish to track them. Maybe he would have found out what had made them get so close together. What had happened between the two of them?

During McGonagall’s class last monday, Sinistra had sat next to Severus and Remus had been too far away to hear what they had said, but he hadn’t missed the intensity in Sinistra’s eyes, the close way she had sat next to him. 

She was interested. 

And Remus was too scared Severus was going to end up reciprocating that interest. 

“Come on, Sev’,” she drawled, “It’s alright. Also, if we keep standing here, we’re not only going to attract others’ attention,” – and there Remus could swear she glanced at him – “but we’ll be late for DADA too.”

Severus cursed under his breath, but started walking towards their next class, Sinistra hot on his heels. 

Remus followed them from a dozen steps behind, watching the movement of their bodies. Multiple times Sinistra leaned towards the Slytherin to talk to him, mostly about inconsequential things, like her needing to owl-order new nail polish since hers was almost completely used. 

“What colour should I order, hm?” she asked, smiling at Severus. 

Remus couldn’t see Severus’ face, but he saw his shrug. “One that you like, I guess.”

“Oh, come on! Give me an answer,” she giggled, and it got on Remus’ nerves. “What colour?”

At the threshold of the DADA class, Severus turned towards her and pursed his lips. “Green,” he said suddenly, and a condescending smirk appeared on his face. Then, he continued his walk into the classroom. Sinistra followed him, plopping next to him once he chose one of the desks. 

“I still can’t believe you managed to get the Defense Teacher to let you attend his class,” mumbled Severus, taking out his books. 

A few benches behind, Remus sat down too, not leaving the duo with his eyes. 

“You know, we should meet–” started the Ravenclaw.

“YO!” screamed Sirius as he plopped down next to Remus and body checked him with his shoulder as a greeting. “Moony, you still alive after History?” he yelled enthusiastically with a huge grin. 

Remus rocked sideways on his bench, and his hands reflexively shot to hold the table for stability. He took a moment to take a deep breath and swallow back the growl stuck in his throat. He then looked at Sirius, now sitting next to him with a huge grin. Standing a few feet from them, James was rolling his eyes while trying to hide his smile. 

“Bloody hell, mate,” said James, taking a seat on Sirius’ other side. “Did the spirit of a bludger possess you, or something?” 

“James! Listen! Listen!” gushed Sirius, beckoning his friend closer. “Now that Moony is here too, I can share the good news!”

Remus wanted to point out that Peter was still missing, but before he could voice his thoughts, James raised his eyebrows and asked: “Good news?”

Sirius energetically nodded. “I talked with Carslaw, and now the booze for our Saturday night party is taken care of!” 

“So that’s why you disappeared during lunch,” noted James. 

“Who disappeared during lunch?” inquired Lily as she sat next to James. 

As James gave her a peck on the cheek, and Sirius started explaining that the alcohol for the party was sorted, Remus’ eyes travelled to a certain Slytherin. 

Severus was watching back, and when their eyes met, he swiftly spinned back around and started messing with his notebook. Sinistra, who had also been watching them, didn’t act as coy as Severus. She maintained eye contact, and then, after giving him a small smile, she too turned back towards the front of the classroom. 

Remus observed them as she leaned towards Severus and whispered something in his ear, but it was way too low for him to hear. He saw Severus’ shoulders raise with tension. 

“Aurora Sinistra!” whisper-yelled Severus, as a blush started blooming on his cheeks, “what on earth–”

“Oh, gosh! Guys, so sorry for being late, but you won’t believe what happened on my way here!” exclaimed Peter as he sat next to Remus and loudly dropped his bag on the bench.

Under the desk, Remus squeezed his hands in anger. Twice! Twice his listening had been cut short! “For fuck’s sake! Can you be any louder, Peter!” he yelled. 

Immediately, Peter’s cheery smile dropped, and he retracted upon himself and away from his friend. “I– I’m…” he stammered, his eyes darting from one side to the other in nervousness. “I’m sorry?”

“Moony!” chastised him James. “Come on, mate!”

Remus took a deep breath again. He shouldn’t have yelled, he knew it, but as Sirius had already unnerved him, Peter’s slight had stung deeper like acid. 

“Sorry,” he mumbled, looking at Peter who appeared like a scared rabbit. 

Peter didn’t react for a moment, scrutinising him with his small brown eyes, then he slowly nodded, and took back his seat next to Remus. However, he kept his guard up, as if there was a possibility of Remus biting him. 

“What were you saying happened?” he asked Wormtail, to get the conversation running again. 

“Oh, nothing much,” muttered Peter, looking away, but Remus could discern the lie in his breath. 

Something had happened, but Remus was too agitated to pry the information from Peter, who should have been a tortoise instead of a rat animagus. Once spooked, it could take a lot of time for him to feel safe again to get out of his shell. 

“Well, good afternoon, everybody!” boomed Professor Arcedeckne as he entered the class and made his way to the blackboard. “Open your books to page 394.”

James finally lost his frown and turned away from Remus, opening his book to the page number Arcedeckne told them. 

“We’re going to study Werewolves and Lycanthropy,” explained the Professor, as he turned on a lumina arcana and scientific illustrations were projected on the wall for them to see. 

Remus rolled his eyes, deciding that he could not listen to this class and still manage to write the best essay of the year about the subject. 

Next to him, he heard Sirius let a chuckle under his breath. “This class is going to be so easy,” he whispered, sending a wink to Remus. Sirius had that one cheeky smile on, the one that went a little bit more up on the right side of his face, the one that made his dimples visible, the one that promised trouble alongside exhilarating fun. It was a beautiful smile that explained why all the girls swooned around him. 

Remus couldn’t stop the smile that formed on his lips. “Yeah,” he whispered back. He really couldn’t stay mad too long at Sirius.

Suddenly, Sirius gently tore a page from his notebook and put it between them. He drew a three per three grid and wrote on top: ‘ Every time he makes a mistake about werewolves, we play. I’ll be O, you start with X. Let’s see who’ll win.’

“Lycanthropy can only be passed on by blood wounds,” explained Arcedeckne, and Remus put an X in the center of the grid. Sometimes, saliva was enough. 

“Werewolves are ordinary people,” continued Arcedeckne and Sirius played his turn. 

“You don’t think I’m ordinary?” asked Remus. 

“Mate, you can hear a fart from the next room. Pretty sure that’s not just ordinary .”

“Fair,” he conceded. 

That’s how they kept playing, writing their symbols strategically on the grid every time the professor made factual errors about the subject. Thankfully, Arcedeckne wasn’t too far away from the truth, so Remus and Sirius just cherry-picked his explanations to play. 

“Lastly,” added Arcedeckne, “know that, even though people suffering from lycanthropy are just like you and me, their illness isn’t one that just appears on full moons, and then disappears for the rest of the month. They have to live with their wolfish instincts all the time, and it flares up during full moon nights.”

Remus’ hand hovered above the paper, knuckles white from tightly holding the quill, and a drop of ink fell to the paper while he hesitated, staining the last empty box. 

“Mate?” asked Sirius, with a frown. 

“Bullshit,” muttered Remus, swallowing hard and finally putting down his X in the last box. With more force than needed, he drew a line over his winning row of marks. 

“Ey, looks like you win,” cheered Sirius, clicking his tongue and gently hitting his shoulder with his fist. 

Remus stared at the grid and at his undeserving win, then shrugged and smiled back at Sirius. “Yep. And now you owe me a butterbeer,” he revealed, getting up and starting to gather his stuff.

Sirius frowned, stopping in his tracks. “Since when?” he asked, and his face was comically puzzled. 

“Since you lost,” answered Remus, passing by his friend and joining James and Lily at the door of the classroom. 

“We were betting?” yelled Sirius, but his tone was cheerful, and then he let out a small laugh. “Alright, Moony, next Hogsmead trip, I’ll treat you to some,” he promised, putting an arm around Remus’ shoulders. 

–

After an hour of break where Remus nibbled on some shortbread cookies and drank tea in the common room with his friends while working a bit on their homework, it was time to go to the last class of the day: Charms. 

Flitwick was a good teacher, sympathetic and cheerful, but still full of knowledge. One fact unknown by the other Marauders was that Flitwick was Remus’ favourite teacher. Maybe it was because the professor was half-goblin, and Remus felt kinship with him. Many had tried to deride him, but Filius Flitwick stayed with his head held high, never letting those comments stop him. It was quite inspiring to Remus. 

On their way to the charms class, Remus spotted Severus and Sinistra walking together ahead, heads almost touching, talking energetically about something.

“Damn,” cursed Sirius, “these two are really close.” Then he turned to Remus. “Moony, can you hear them?”

Curious, Remus nodded and tried to listen. 

“There is no way,” said Severus angrily, as he pushed back some of his black locks behind his ear. “We can’t–”

“Oh, yes, we can, and we will,” retorted Sinistra, grasping Severus’ wrist. 

To Remus’ joy, the Slytherin shook her hand off. 

“Did you forget what I told you then?” she hissed, and Remus almost missed what she was going to say next. “You accepted, Severus. You accepted. We’re going to live .”

Remus frowned. 

“I am certain I didn’t accept that part,” hissed back Severus. 

“Eleven o’clock sharp, Severus!” she snapped. “Or I won’t forgive you ever!”

She then grabbed his wrist again and started pulling him in another corridor, and Severus let her guide him. “We’re skipping,” she ordered. “Better things to do than relearn leviosa.”

Once they had disappeared, “So?” asked Sirius.

“I don’t know,” admitted Remus. “She wants them to do something but he’s not on board with the idea,” he reported. “Then she forced him to skip with her.”

“Ouhhh,” howled Sirius. “Trouble in paradise already? That was quick!” he joked, but the potential of them dating felt like a stab to Remus. 

“James, mate?” asked Sirius, turning to his friend who was walking behind them with Lily. “You got the map?”

“What do you need it for?” huffed James. 

“To see where Sniv’ and that Ravenclaw went.”

Next to James, Remus noticed the slight twitch in Lily’s jaw. She looked at James, clearly to gauge what he was going to do next. 

James clearly could feel her eyes on him, Remus observed, but his friend acted as if his girlfriend wasn’t burning holes into him. 

“Pad, we’ve got class, we haven’t got any time to check where they’re going,” explained James, wincing. 

A frown appeared on Sirius’ face. “Just give me the map, James.” 

James scowled, but complied, pulling out the map from his bag and holding it out. Sirius tore it from James’ hand with way more force than needed, and pointed his wand at it. 

Immediately, ink splotches bloomed on the paper, forming the map. 

“Let’s see where they are…” mumbled Sirius, as the group made their way into the classroom. “Huh? They’re just heading towards the lakeshore,” he announced, clearly disappointed by that fact. “Boooring,” he sulked, folding back the map and slipping it in the inner pocket of his robe. 

Inconspicuously, Remus led the group to the benches next to the ceiling high windows that had a direct view to the Lake. A normal human’s eyes couldn’t have made out that far, but Remus could clearly see. 

While the group took out their books and quills, Remus did it while watching the lakeshore. Beyond the pane, amidst the white expanse of the Scottish Highlands, the Lake was like a dark ink spot over a white canvas. Its surface was smooth and undisturbed, where thin ice layers had formed on its edges, dangerously innocuous looking.

The fresh snow that had fallen during the night had covered the whole expanse in a blindingly thick white layer, only blemished by the footprints of the students. Threes’ naked dark trunks and branches contrasted with the light canvas, appearing like black brushstrokes. Their skinny and knobby branches had been bent down by the weight of the snow, almost touching the ground for some of them. 

In that stark expanse, one tall and lean silhouette was sitting on a boulder while the other female one was up, pacing back and forth and gesticulating vigorously. 

Oh, how Remus would have wanted to be the one out there with the Slytherin, keeping him company while skipping. 

Sinistra kicked a pebble into the lake, the small rock sliding on the ice, instead of sinking. With a huff, she pointed to Severus’ chest, to which Severus just shrugged. Sinistra glared at him for a moment, then stepped towards a small snow hill, gathered a bunch of it in her hands, and threw the ball directly at Severus. Despite the Slytherin trying to shield himself with his arms, it hit him in the chest. 

“What are you looking at?” asked Sirius, leaning towards Remus. 

Remus shifted his gaze from the silhouettes to his friend. “The Lake. It looks nice,” he lied, shrugging. He then glanced back outside for a split second.

The boulder was bare, Severus having gotten up already, his stuff collected, and a white spot on his dark coat. He was walking back to the castle, not looking back at the Ravenclaw he had left there.

Sinistra put her hands at her hips, then seeing Severus not coming back, swung her bag on her shoulder and strutted until she was at the same level with Severus. They stopped to talk a bit, and Sinistra presented him her pinky finger, but after a beat, he ignored her. She gently shoulder checked him and kept walking with him into Hogwarts. As they entered the building, Remus lost sight of them. 

“Did you see them?” whispered Sirius, since Flitwick had already started his class. 

Remus knew who his friend meant as ‘them’ . “Barely,” he lied again. 

“Eh,” shrugged Sirius. “It’s not like they're going to do anything much outside in that tit-freezing cold,” mumbled Sirius as he gently shoulder checked him, the same way Sinistra had done to Severus moments ago, and seeing the tender and playful smile on Sirius’ lips, Remus decided to forget about the Slytherin-Ravenclaw duo for a moment. 

—

On Saturday evening, the preparation for the party started and it was a bit hectic. Sirius was basically running around, trying to put it all together. 

Peter and Remus were helping, while James was getting ready upstairs. Prongs had put on an exuberant amount of perfume and for Remus, between the options of either staying in that stinking bedroom and drowning in that smell, or going down and helping Sirius while sweating, the choice was easy. That’s how he found himself carrying packs of beer from Carslaw’s room to the common room, while Peter was turning with his wand the noisy paintings against the wall so they could not spy on them. Even though Sirius had charmed wine bottles into a meadow painting as a bribe for the painted people in exchange for their silence a few hours prior, it was better to take all of the possible precautions to not get snitched on. Some of these folks were very old, and their definition of acceptable was very different from Remus’ generation. Once, in a Ravenclaw party, one of the paintings had snitched to the professors, and his reason? A girl and boy had been shagging a little bit away, behind a curtain. Since then, people made sure to go to the bathroom or to the bedrooms to do their stuff. 

Very quickly, the time for the party to start came, as people from other houses started to fill the common room. The first ones to enter through the Fat Lady’s frame were a couple of Hufflepuffs girls, smiling and waving at their Gryffondor friends. 

The lights had been dimmed, where the biggest light source had become the three fireplaces. Colour changing fairy lights had been hung all around the room, giving it a cozy atmosphere. A chair had been transformed into a table that held all of the beverages and the food, while other objects had been mutated into floor cushions to accommodate the growing number of people in the room. 

In a corner, Sirius had set up a record player and had already placed there a vinyl of the group Ramones ready to be played. The album, a debut, had the same name as the group, and it had only come out less than a year ago, during the spring of their fifth year. Sirius had bought it during their Easter Hols, and since then, it was one of his prized possessions. 

Remus gently placed the needle on the disk and the quick rhythmed sounds of electric guitars filled the room. Blitzkrieg Bop was one of the group’s best songs, quite catchy and hectic, making you immediately want to dance. 

Smiling and nodding to the rhythm of the song, Remus turned back to the room, where Sirius, finally done with his own share of work, was beaming, bright like his namesake star. 

Remus had discovered he liked boys at twelve years olds, when a back-then seventh year (now having already graduated long ago) Arthur Weasley had helped him with homework. Remus couldn’t remember what subject he had been struggling with, but he could remember Weasley like it was yesterday. His crooked smile, deep but gentle voice, and finally, his masculine hands pointing to different parts of his book had ignited his first crush ever. 

And now, looking at Sirius, at his tall, muscled body, at his long curly hair, his jaw sharp enough to cut diamond, his straight nose complemented by his deep set blue hunter eyes, Remus could admit his friend was one handsome specimen. Leaning against the wall, looking effortlessly perfect in his skinny jeans and black shirt, Sirius gave the image of a very bad boy, one that would give you one adventure of a romance, and then would break your heart because settling down wasn’t in his free spirited blood. 

Feeling his eyes on him, Sirius turned to look at him, then winked at him with one of his cheeky smiles, and Remus sensed himself blush. In those dim lights, Remus felt like they were all alone in the room, the music background noise, their eyes locked in a mysterious contemplation of each other. 

Then the magic of the moment shattered when people let out loud gasps, and Remus turned to look at what had shocked them. 

Through the frame of the Fat Lady, came in Sinistra, and just behind her, Severus Snape. 

Chapter 6: Severus and One Philosophical Bathroom-talk

For some foolish idea, Sinistra had decided they needed to attend the Gryffindor party, and she had managed to pull him into her dejanted plan. 

As they had made their way to their Charms class (which they later had skipped because she had decided so), she had told him her desire to attend the party. He had said ‘no’. She had gone about the concept of ‘finally living’ . 

On the lakeshore, as he had sat on a rock and she had been restlessly walking, she had asked him again, and when he had categorically refused, she had threatened – yes! THREATENED! – to stop helping him to take down the Dark Lord if he didn’t accompany her to the party.

“It was your idea to stop him!” he had said but it had fallen on deaf ears. 

“Eleven o’clock sharp, Sev! You better wait for me in front of my common room entrance,” she had dictated. 

“Why do I need to escort you?” he had asked, aggravated by her nonchalant attitude. 

Under the pale afternoon sun, she had looked like his refusal had hurt her. “Because I want to.”

“It’s Gryffindor,” he had precised, in case she had forgotten where the party was taking place. 

“I know,” and she had just shrugged. 

“No way I am putting a foot in that common room. Into enemy territory!”

“Oh come on, you’re acting like the whole House is tormenting you, when it’s only just two ball-less dicks.” And then she had thrown a snowball at him. 

The mental image of a penis without its testicules had appeared in his mind and he had shuddered in disgust. Sinistra had a strange way with words.

Severus had just gone up and walked back to the castle, and when she had caught up to him, she had asked him why he was so against going to the party when many people would be there, and the Marauders wouldn’t really dare to do anything in public.

“Did you forget what they did to me last year?” he had yelled, his mind short-circuiting from the gall she had to even say something like that to him. “When they levitated me and took off my clothes in front of a crowd?” The pain from that moment was seared into his whole being, like a half-healed half-infected old wound. One that no matter what you did, how long you waited, would still flare up from time to time to just hurt you. “I would be demented to even step one single foot in their common room, when all Potter and Black want is to skin me.”

Sinistra had sighed, then nodded, the fight leaving her shoulders, like that memory hadn’t even crossed her mind, which, from what she explained, hadn’t. “I wasn’t there when it happened,” she whispered, “if it can console you. I learned about what they did a day later, and I am so sorry you had to go through that, but Sev,” and here she was again with that nickname, “you shouldn’t let them rule your life.” 

Oh, it was so easy for her to say that. She hadn’t been the one to be dangled upside down, to be ridiculed for your old undergarments, after years of being hunted for sports. As anger bubbled inside Severus, he took one glance at Sinistra, at her truly apologetic face, and the rage immediately left him. There would be no catharsis from berating her. All he would get would be one single instance of feeling superior, and then it would all fizzle out as quick as it came, and make him feel bad for being mean to the only person who was actively trying to stay by his side. 

So instead of raising his nose in self righteousness and explaining to her how stupid she was for not understanding the obsession to bully him that ran through Potter and Black’s veins, he just shrugged his shoulders and kept walking. “I’m trying to, but they are adamant to do just that. At this point, it’s out of my hands.”

Sinistra had shaken her head, her curls swinging from side-to-side. “Maybe, but it’s still in my hands.” Her voice had taken a deeper, more serious edge.

He had raised an eyebrow at that statement.

“See, I will be there with you,” she had kept going on, “and if they dare even touch one single hair of your head, I’ll hex them to hell.”

“Yeah, of course,” he had huffed. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe she would try to help him. She would. He knew deep down she would, if not by camaraderie, for the sake of their common goal at least. The problem was that Sinsitra was just Sinistra, a girl who liked astrology, one that would become the astronomy teacher and will, in a future he hoped wouldn’t come to fruition, come back in time to save the love of her life, and meanwhile, Potter and Black were honed hexers with years of experience. She didn’t stand a chance against them if it came to fighting. 

“I swear! Pinky promise,” she had exclaimed, presenting her finger to him, sincerity shining in her brown eyes.

He had eyed her hand for a moment, then had resumed his walk into the castle, ignoring her. 

She hadn’t taken it as an insult, but had given him a friendly shoulder check as they made their way inside. 

And now, at fifteen minutes to eleven o’clock, Severus was waiting in front of the Ravenclaw common room, eyed by the few students that exited their dorm in the evening darkness. 

Severus felt stupid. In the end, her argument that someone could spike her drink had won him over, so here he was, standing all alone like some loser, impatiently waiting for her to just get out of her dorm and end his misery. If Sinistra stood him up, he would never speak to her ever again. 

As he was thinking about how much of a mistake it had been to accept to accompany her, the common room opened and a girl slipped out. 

“Snape,” she called. 

He turned around and was met with a heart shaped face and blond hair. Charity Burbage. 

She eyed him up and down, and popped once the gum she was chewing. With a deft tongue, she managed for it to not stick to her face and pulled it back completely in her mouth to chew further. 

“Burbage,” he finally said, acknowledging her with a small nod. In the deserted hallway, the silence started to uncomfortably stretch, making him feel awkward. 

After a few seconds, Burbage glanced around, as if to make sure they were alone, then her eyes were back on him. “So, you and Sinistra are dating or what?” she finally asked, lips pursed in annoyance. She loudly popped her gum again. 

“Eh… no?” His answer came out quite fast, before he could even really think about it. However, it wasn’t like there was anything to think about. He truly wasn’t dating Sinistra, and even if their sudden rapprochement could be eyed by outsiders with romantical undertones, the truth was that they were…. friends? No. No. They were not friends. Severus had been friends with Lily. Sinistra was still friends with Burbage, but him and Sinistra? No. The only reason they even rubbed shoulders was for their common goal of taking the Dark Lord down, which, begrudgingly, Severus had to admit made them more than just acquaintances. So, they shared a mission, which would make them… colleagues? Well, colleagues they were then, but that wasn’t something he could just tell Burbage. “We’re just friends,” he lied instead. 

She raised her eyebrows in contemplation, then popped her gum again. The sound echoed in the hallway, like bells of judgment. She finally decided to speak again. “Listen,” she said, hitting his chest with one manicured finger. “You break her heart, I break your legs, capiche?”

It dawned on Severus that Burbage hadn’t believed him, because she had already made her mind up about him and his objective to date Sinistra, which, thank you very much, didn’t exist. “I… I think there is a misunderstanding—”

“I don’t care if you guys date or not. You better not just hurt her.” And her finger painfully dug into the flesh of his chest. 

Severus wanted to swat her hand away. He wasn’t going to let a Hufflepuff bully him, for Merlin’s sake. Whatever stupid display of strength and protectiveness this was, he didn’t want to be subjugated to it. 

As he was going to tell her as much, the door to the Ravenclaw common room opened again, and someone cut him. 

“Sev! Charity!” exclaimed Sinistra as she made her way into the hallway. “Hi, guys!” And as if she couldn’t sense the heavy awkwardness in the air, she asked, “Whatchu two talking about?”

Severus sighed and decided to let Burbage take care of answering that, which she half-assedly did. “Oh, nothing much. Anyway, I’m leaving for the night. Have fun.”

“You’re sure you don’t want to come with us to the party?” asked Sinistra, lower lip out in a cutesy pout.

“Yup,” said the Hufflepuff girl, smiling, but Severus could see the tension in her jaw. 

Severus deduced that Burbage, by being a good friend, didn’t like seeing Sinistra affiliating with the likes of him . Clearly, in her head, Sinistra should be attending the party with a handsome bloke that could pay her some butterbeer if they ever decided to go on a date in Hogsmeade, and decidedly not with one that had a reputation for liking dark arts and being a creepy dungeon bat. 

Definitely not with someone like… wouldn’t you know… Severus Snape? Maybe?

Severus huffed, as he watched Burbage’s retreating back, and crossed his arms in annoyance. 

The girl’s protective intentions were clear, and even though it made jealousy churn in Severus’ stomach, at seeing Sinistra still having his childhood love keeping an eye out for her, he also felt sadness at being labelled as a lacking potential partner. He had put aside pursuing romantical liaisons a long time ago, his logical mind quickly coming to the conclusion he wasn’t an appealing individual for one to date, be it because of his looks or his acrid personality. He had beat down that little bud in his soul that, like every other teenage boy who entered puberty, had appeared one day, wanting to explore love and sexuality. 

Not that Severus didn’t indulge in solo-time. He did, but it wasn’t from wanting it. Everytime his body decided it was time to just act out and remind him that he was, even with his old soul, technically a teenager, he would go through that particular moment with a clinical detachment. Before, he used to imagine Lily while doing it, and while in the moment it felt nice, afterwards his mouth would be all cottony, and he would feel like he besmirched her. So nowadays, he just did it with the image of a faceless girl, because after his fallout with Lily, the thought of even using her for something so debased felt so wrong on so many levels. 

Sinistra eyed him. “She’s a nice person, you know,” she said, clearly trying to show Burbage under a better light to Severus. “I guess she felt–”

“Yeah, yeah, protective. Whatever,” he said, swaying a hand around, “let’s go if you’re ready.” He didn’t want to dwell on his unwanted status and make the wound in his heart bleed again. 

Sinistra grimaced. “I’m actually not. I still need to do my makeup, but what are you wearing, Sev?”

Severus looked down at his school robes and couldn’t spot anything wrong with them. “My robes? What’s the problem with them?” He even had put on his newly washed and ironed shirt under his sleeveless pullover. 

“Yeah…” grimaced Sinistra, looking him up and down. “That’s not gonna work.”

“What? Why not?” His clothes were clean and didn’t look ragged, so what could the problem be? 

Sinistra sighed, and just held up her hand and said, “Accio makeup bag.”

They waited for a moment, until suddenly the common room door opened and a brown bag sailed into her hand. Finally immobile in her grasp, Severus could see it was an old makeup bag, its fake brown leather peeling in multiple places. 

“Lets’ go,” she said, as she started walking along the hallway, in the opposite direction of the Gryffindor tower. 

Severus sighed, but followed her as they went across the castle, not meeting any prefects or head boy or girl on their way, as surely they had been bribed to not patrol so students could leave their dormitories and attend the party in the Gryffindor common room. 

The teachers and Filch started their own patrol way after midnight, but by then, everybody would have already made their way to the party. 

The tricky part was how to leave for your own dormitory once the festivities ended. By the hour a party usually was done, the teachers were on full-swing patrolling, with Filch and his cat searching for curfew-breaking students like bloodhounds. 

That’s when you had to pray to all the gods out there to not get caught. After parties, every house lost between fifty to one hundred points, while the number of students given detention swelled astronomically.

Once the teachers noticed some students were a bit tipsy, and that they caught a bit more students than usual, they quickly understood a party had been held somewhere, and like old aunties craving gossip, they made it their life goal to find every little brat daring to have some fun. 

Until tonight, Severus had never even thought about how to return to his dorm room without getting flagged by a teacher or Filch, for the simple reason he didn’t attend parties and he didn’t break curfew the nights people threw those. 

But now, he had to think about a strategy to bring him and Sinistra back safely to their dorms without getting caught. Would taking the northern stairs and passing by the quite deserted third floor make their journey safer, even if it lengthened their trip a bit? Or should they pass by the fourth floor, which would make it faster for them, but Mrs. Norris was known for patrolling that route, and once you got caught by the cat, the master wouldn’t be far away either. 

It’s while lost within these deep thoughts that Severus found himself in front of a door. 

He furrowed his brows as he watched Sinistra walk into the second-floor girl lavatories, leaving him outside. 

As Severus was going to huff about how Sinistra could have at least told him she needed to use the loo, her head peaked out of the bathroom. “What are you waiting for? Come on, get in. We don’t have all night.”

“That’s the girls’ toilet!”

“And?”

“And I’m a dude!”

Sinistra rolled her eyes, as if his statement was absurd. “Sev, no one even uses it anymore.”

That was one argument in her favour: the loo was out of use since Moaning Myrtle, back whenever she had died, had decided to haunt that place forever. 

Still. After taking a hit to his potential as a partner, he suddenly was irrationally defensive of his virility. 

“Are you going to just stand there like that?” she asked, and then jerked her head towards the inside while watching him.

“Yes.”

This time, it was Sinistra’s turn to huf. “Seriously? What’s the matter with you?”

There was no way he could explain the turmoil in his head to her. She wouldn’t understand. Severus wasn’t especially effeminate, but his long hair and skinny frame, the fact he’d had to wear his mom’s clothing because of poverty, were enough for the muggle children back in his hometown to make fun of him. Only Lily had never commented on his appearance. It had been a reprieve. 

Last year, when he had gone home for the summer hols, his dad had come home drunk one night, way more than usual. So drunk he couldn’t stand up at all, with no energy left in his body. When he had seen Severus washing the dishes in the kitchen, with his hair in a ponytail and an apron around his waist, he had whispered under his breath ‘ciota’. But Severus had heard him, because it had been the dead of night, and a heavy silence had been weighing over the house. 

Severus was one quarter Polish, with his paternal grandmother being a Polish immigrant, who after coming to the UK, had married a British man and had his dad. Pretty sure she had had another child, an uncle for Severus, but Merlin knew where that one was. Back when Severus was still very young, his grandma had been living with them and had taught him a bit of her language, and after her death when he was only five, Tobias had kept her legacy by speaking to him in Polish. 

So long story short, Tobias Snape knew how to speak Polish, and so did Severus, even if he wasn’t as fluent as his dad. 

Ciota. It had hurt, because while the word was a slur, his dad hadn't said it to try to wound him. Otherwise he wouldn’t have tried to keep his voice down. He would have screamed it. No, his dad, with his slouched shoulders and tired gaze, had just mumbled aloud, in his drunken state, the conclusion he had come to about his son’s nature. 

And now, his dad’s voice saying that single word was reverberating in his skull, while he stood there, in front of the second floor girls’ lavatory, way past curfew.

“Sev?” asked Sinistra, and Severus’ body shook with a jerk at the sound of his name. “Sev, come on. We don’t have all night,” she repeated.

Severus grimaced, eying the threshold separating the hallway from the bathroom, stricken by the absurd thought that if he stepped in that place, he would become a girl. 

“Sev!” Sinistra was furrowing her brows in annoyance. “What’s the matter?”

He wanted to scream at her that the matter was his insecurities, his broken relationship with his masculine side, his fear entering that room and something shattering inside him. 

He stayed silent. Instead, begrudgingly, he walked towards the door and as he stepped over the threshold, he held his breath as if some curse was going to hit him. 

And of course, nothing happened. He found himself inside the deserted bathroom, in front of the rows of toilet cubicles’ wooden doors, with a series of old cracked sinks on his left. The huge mirror on top of them was shattered in some corners, with dark spots marring most of the reflective surface. 

With a small click, Sinistra closed the door behind him and Severus felt trapped inside the place. 

“See, nothing to fear,” she joked with a smile. “No troll yet.”

Troll?

Troll!

Right, Harry Potter and his friends were going to fight a troll in this bathroom in the future… that is, if Severus and Sinistra didn’t stop Voldemort. If they did, the boy would never have to go through any traumatising events during his school years. 

You have been raising him like a pig for slaughter!

Have you grown to care for the boy, after all?

Harry would grow up with his parents, and knowing James Potter, he would spoil his son rotten, making him worse of a gremlin he was already in Severus’ memories. 

But Lily would be happy, as she raised Harry alongside her husband. She would stop James from indulging their kid too much, would teach Harry humility, kindness and love. 

Lily would be alive and happy. 

“Why did you bring us here, Sinistra?” he asked, trying to stop thinking about the different futures that lay in front of him. 

“To get ready for the party, of course!”

“Couldn’t you just do your makeup in your room?”

“I could,” she answered, as she propped her bag on one of the sinks and opened it. The sound of the zipper echoed around. 

“Then why did we have to come here in the first place?”

“Because while you can enter this bathroom, you can't enter my bedroom.”

“Huh?” 

Sinistra rolled her eyes. “You look like you’re dressed for class, not a party,” she pointed out, as she took a cream tube out of her bag and squeezed a bit on her fingers. “If you want to change your clothes in the middle of the hallway, just in front of the Ravenclaw entrance, we can go back there, but I will assume you do not, so here we are, a place no one wants to enter and that we both can.”

“I’m not changing my clothes! And what about the Belfry? We could have gone there for this.”

She started rubbing the cream on her face. “One, yes, you are. Two, there are no mirrors in the Belfry.”

“I’m not changing my clothes in the girls’ lavatory,” he repeated.

“Oh. My. God,” she said, huffing, clearly fed up with him. With the unexpected muggle expression, Severus remembered Sinistra was a halfblood like him. “I promise you, you won’t die, okay?”

Severus shook his head. “Tough luck, I don’t own anything else. And if you want me to accompany you to that bloody party, you’ll have to just accept it.”

Sinistra smirked at that, and Severus felt an electric shock-like feeling run down his spine from top to bottom. That was a smile that promised nothing good.

“My, my!” she said, still grinning. “That’s, of course, without counting on my abilities.” 

“Your abilities?”

“See,” she drawled, clearly quite happy with herself, “I don’t own much clothes either, what with me being poor, but you won’t catch me in the same attire twice.”

Severus raised one of his eyebrows in disbelief. “Really?”

“There are two very nice and easy charms for our predicament,” she explained, holding out two fingers in a peace sign. “One is colovaria, and the other one is textum mutatio.” 

Colour change and texture mutation?

Suddenly, the combination of these two spells started making sense for Severus. “Where did you learn the second charm?” he asked. It hadn’t been part of their curriculum. 

“Charity’s subscribed to the One-Thousand-and-One Beauty Spells for Young Witches magazine. She loves it, and whenever she's done with the newest issue, she lends it to me. It’s full of cosmetic and fashion spells. There are even potion recipes in it sometimes.”

Severus nodded, but then went on to say, “I’m still not letting you–”

“Are you serious right now?” she yelled, clearly fed up.

“No, I’m still Severus,” he deadpanned. 

It took her a few seconds to understand the joke, and once her mind made the connection, she started laughing. 

“Oh my God!” she said, as she kept cackling. 

Her happy voice reverberated in the room, and Severus couldn’t stop himself from smirking a bit. 

“Ha ha ha! That was so lame!” she said, holding her sides. 

“But you’re laughing,” he said, a smile tugging at his lips. 

She nodded, smiling. “It was so unexpected, ha ha! One second we were arguing and the next— Pfft.” She finally calmed down a bit, but Severus could still see her eyes sparkle with humour. Then she straightened from her bent over position and looked at him. “You’re not getting out of this just because you made me laugh!”

Severus rolled his eyes. Of course she wouldn’t forget about that. Severus huffed, and crossed his arms. “Why are you so obsessed with what I am wearing?”

“Because we’re going to the party together, and if I am putting so much effort into it, so should the guy that is accompanying me.”

“Why are you putting in so much effort, though?” he asked, not understanding her fixation on their clothes. “This can’t be your first party–”

“It is,” she cut him. “The same way it’s your first party, it also is mine.”

Severus closed his mouth. He looked at her, at the effort she had put into her hair, at the very-well defined coils and curls, looking shiny and healthy. Meanwhile, he had just washed his coarse hair and now his strands were going in different ways like he was a post and his hair the direction signs. 

He sighed. “Really? Your first party?”

Sinistra nodded. “I… I sense regrets, in my future,” she revealed, somber. “Regrets for staying a bookworm during my Hogwarts years and never having fun, because there was always something to study. In my memories… when I become an adult, I regret not having fun at least one night of these seven years.”

Severus lowered his gaze because for a second, her eyes seemed like his own when he looked in the mirror: pained by remorse.

“I studied so hard until I managed to get my masteries. Everytime I put off having fun, saying I would do things that I enjoyed later, and by the time I ended up as a teacher here, I’ve… never had fun.” She glanced away. 

Severus could relate to that. Since his birthday, he had managed to compartmentalise part of his new memories, and most of them were oozing of regret. A lot were over his joining of the Death Eaters, but some were over more mundane things: like never having anyone to go to drink a cup of tea with, or someone to tell him the latest gossip. 

Until that day in the Shrieking Shack, until Nagini’s fangs in his throat, there had been no fun in his life. 

“But this time,” said Sinistra, finally able to look him in the eye again, her eyes set with determination. “I want to live. Finally live. Do you understand, Severus? Live. My. Life. Because while this is a way for us to save Charity and Evans, it’s also a second chance for us.”

Severus shook his head. “And by that, you mean attending a party?”

“Yeah, it’s something I never did and I want to do it at least once. I spent my whole life slaving away to get those masteries just… just to get away from that damned house, from her, but what did it bring me? I’m just a poor halfblood, Sev. Just like you. All I did was manage to get a spot as a teacher here.”

Poor halfblood. Like him.

“During the first war, the one that is coming, I had to do the dirtiest jobs just to be able to pay a dingy roof over my head. And it’s not like astronomy is a discipline that opens multiple doors. Nobody wants to know their love horoscope when the threat of death is hanging over their head. The only ones that can afford such frivolity are rich purebloods, and none wanted to hire me because of my halfblood status.” 

She shook her head in anger. “There was this sleazebag with a shop in Knockturn. Old pervert,” she spat. “He would hire me every two weeks for some transfiguration work, but then he tried to shag me and…” she hissed furiously, “it was between that or going back to that house, to her.”

Suddenly, Sinistra walked towards him with hast, propped her leg over a sink and pulled up her dress to show him a smooth thigh. For a second, Severus was too stunned to look away from that expanse of skin, but the moment he regained his wits, he jerked his face away and glued his gaze to the ceiling.

“No, look,” ordered Sinistra. “Look at what she did.” Severus refused to obey, but suddenly a hand grabbed his jaw and pulled down his face. “Look at her handiwork.”

Begrudgingly, he glanced at her thigh, feeling his cheeks heat up. At first glance, he couldn’t discern anything amiss, but as he looked with more attention, he could see round marks where the skin was lighter. 

“She used to stub out her fags on me,” she explained, as she dug a finger into one of those pale circles. “They would hurt for weeks, sometimes a full month. My body’s covered in them.”

“Who?” he asked, too dumbfounded.

“Why, my mother of course,” she answered, laughing, but it was bitter, full of hatred. She slowly put down her leg and pulled down her skirt to hide her thigh. “My dad was a sheltered pureblood wizard,” she revealed. “One night, one of his mates dared him to visit the muggle world. There, he met a very beautiful muggle girl. The rest is History, as they say. They kept meeting every night at the same place, and then– poof! That girl is pregnant, and dad, being dad, decides he’s going to assume his responsibility in creating life. It takes two to dance the devil’s tango, they say.” She sighed, shaking her head. “Dad’s family disowned him, not accepting he could stain the family line with a halfblood grandkid. So he left his family to marry mum. Publicly, I was born at seven months. Even so, I wonder how many premature babies are born weighing seven pounds.” 

That story did sound a lot like what had made Eileen Prince and Tobias Snape marry in the first place: an unexpected pregnancy from a one night stand. Unaccepting parents banishing their kid. Two teenage parents stricken with poverty.

“So your mum hates magic?” he asked. 

“Yep,” she acknowledged, popping the ‘p’. “Mom hates it. Says it’s some demonic shit and that we’re doing Satan’s bidding. She’s a devout catholic. At first, she stayed with dad just for me, but then I also showed magical prowess…” Sinistra shrugged. “The only reason she stays is that, for her, we are her punishment for premarital sex.”

“Oh well… it’s not so different on my side,” he blurted out, without thinking.  

Unknowingly, Sinistra was in a position to truly understand him, in a way Lily could never have. One also had to be on the other end of parental abuse to fully get another’s trauma. 

“My dad,” he mumbled, “my dad hates magic, and mum was disowned too.”

Never had Severus been so open about his familial situation to another person, but with Sinistra, there was a common ground, one that hadn’t existed with Lily. 

Sinistra gave him a knowing smile. 

For the first time, Severus felt understood. For the first time, he felt he wasn’t alone in the hell that his parents’ had created. 

He had known he hadn’t been the only boy with fucked up parents, most of the parents on Spinner’s End were wrong in one way or the other, but as he had been both ostracised in his hometown and in his school, he had never been able to breach the subject with anyone at all. 

“If you ever want to talk about it,” said Sinistra, “I’m here. And I’ll understand.”

That, Severus knew. He nodded. “I… maybe later,” he mumbled. He wasn’t as strong as her to be able to talk about it yet. He still had to fight those demons and tame them before he could manage to speak about them. 

Sinistra gave him a smile, then friendly punched his upper arm and turned towards her makeup bag, taking out a black pencil from it, closing the subject.

Watching her reflection in the mirror, she pulled her lower eyelid and started tracing her waterline. Then she suddenly turned to Severus, one eye kohlled and the other bare, and looked him up and down. “You know,” she said nonchalantly, and with her next words, the heavy atmosphere in the bathroom dissipated, “eyeliner would suit you.”  

“What?” he asked.

“Eyeliner. It would suit you,” she repeated, finishing tracing her second eye. “You have very pretty eyes, perfect for kohl.”

Severus choked on his own spit. No one ever had called him pretty, and even in his inherited future memories there was nothing like that. Severus wasn’t pretty or handsome or anything. He was ugly. He knew it, his parents knew it, the whole school knew it. If he had been even a little bit visually acceptable, Potter and Black wouldn’t have used his looks against him so many times. 

“No,” he interjected, shaking his head. 

Sinistra looked from her mirror, pausing in her makeup. “No, what?” 

“I’m not pretty.”

“I said ‘pretty eyes’, Sev. Also, you’re not bad looking, you know,” she said, shrugging, as if it wasn’t the most hurtful lie. 

“Pfft. Yeah. Lay it on thick, while you’re at it,” he sneered, crossing his arms. 

“You do have pretty eyes. Pretty big black eyes, like the ones of a doe,” she told him while rubbing a blue shimmering eyeshadow on her eyelids. “And even if right now you haven’t still grown into your features, you will one day.”

“Liar,” he said, outright accusing her.

“That, I am not,” she objected. “I was– will be? Whatever. I was your colleague for years, Sev. I saw you all year round, and let me tell you, you will become one charismatic man.”

And Severus knew for a fact that he will not, and seeing her say the opposite with such a convincing face hurt. He had always been undesirable, what with his huge nose. 

“Everything points to the contrary,” he ended up mumbling. 

Sinistra shook her head, then stepped towards him, and slowly brought her hands to his face. Sinistra was tall for a girl, but she was still two inches shorter than him, but when Severus jerked away, she still managed to cup his cheeks. “You have high cheekbones,” she said, as she brushed them with her thumbs, “a strong brow bridge,” she pointed as she passed her right index on his eyebrow, “a jawline that is sharpening, and finally, a pronounced nose bridge. Very masculine features.”

Severus scrunched up his nose instinctively under her watchful eyes. 

“But then,” she continued on, “you have these doe eyes, with long dark lashes. Quite feminine. However, they help balance your face.” She finally let go of him and stepped back. 

“Don’t say that,” he told her. “I…” don’t like hearing I can be feminine. It scares me about myself. “I’m not feminine.”

“It’s just your eyes. And they suit you. You haven’t fully grown into your features yet, but once you’re older I know for a fact you will.”

“I won’t become a handsome man,” he said, knowing full well how unappealing he would still look once adult. He had access to his future as memories too, for Merlin’s sake. 

“I never said you’ll become handsome,” she retorted, and Severus felt like she had stabbed him a dozen times in the heart. 

“You–” he started in anger and frustration.

“I said, you will be charismatic,” she cut him off, voice earnest. “Potter is handsome, but he doesn’t have an ounce of the charisma you do. He keeps ruffling his hair and acts all nonchalant, just so he can keep up with you in Evans’ eyes.”

With her explanation, his anger left his body like steam would a pressure cooker. It all fizzled out in seconds. His shoulders sagged as he sighed. Charisma or not, Lily had still chosen Potter over him. 

“As much as I loathe to say it, Black is handsome and charismatic,” she went on, grimacing. It looked like the confession was painful for her. “Pettigrew lacks both irredeemably, while Lupin is just wasted potential. His face is sunken and he looks older because of stress. If he does some exercise and gets some sleep, he could get a nice frame and a healthy face, and if his lycanthrophy didn’t socially stun him, he could also have been a bit charismatic.”

“Lycan– YOU KNOW–” yelled Severus, eyes widening in shock. 

“You outed him at the end of his first teaching year,” said Sinistra, looking like she expected him to remember that, which, true, he should have remembered, but more than twenty years of new memories could not be unpacked, checked and correctly stored in his mind in a week. “Anyway,” she kept going, “what I mean is that, while you’re not conventionally handsome, your charisma is attractive.”

Severus rubbed his eyes, feeling too tired suddenly for this conversation. What insane turn had his life taken, for ending up having to discuss his looks with a lesbian in some grimy bathroom at night? 

“Ugh,” he huffed, not wanting to think that maybe, maybe, he wasn’t a lost cause. But Sinistra’s arguments about his charisma felt more like the ones a mother would tell her child, because in her eyes, her baby was truly good-looking, while not caring that the world didn’t share her opinion. 

“You know,” she said, smiling, “I remember noticing a few seventh year girls crushing on you while we were teachers.”

“What?” he yelled. 

She nodded. “I guess it was the whole stoic and cold act that got them. You know, the ‘disdainful older man hating everybody but you’ fantasy.”

“I never did anything unsavory towards any of my students!” 

She laughed. “I’m not saying you did. A lot of students happen to fancy their teachers. It’s all part of puberty and growing up. For Christ’s sake, I had a crush on Pomona in my fourth year.”

“Professor Sprout?” he shrieked, shocked to his core by the revelation. “Isn’t she like… older than our parents? Pretty sure she taught my mum!”

She nodded, winking. “What do you want me to say? I saw her digging the earth with her fingers and–”

“Oh for Circe’s– Sinistra!” he squealed, blushing at the obscene finger movement she made. 

“What?” she giggled, clearly happy with embarrassing him. “You never crushed on a teacher? I know McGonagall is a bit old, but I think she’s like wine: gets better with age. And what about D’Orazio?”

“The divination teacher?” 

Antonio D’Orazio was a tall man that managed to keep his sun kissed skin even in Scotland’s sunless weather, with dark brown curls that framed his dimpled smile and deep set green eyes. He always wore one griffin talon earring on his right lobe and multiple different stone bracelets on his wrists. He had this iconic orange crochet shawl with beaded tassels that smoothed out his sharp shoulders. Long story short, he was handsome, radiating the energy of a caring, masculine, but gentle man, and when Severus thought about it now, he could understand why so many girls attended his class. 

“He’s Italian, you know,” said Sinistra, wiggling her brows. “They say Mediterranean men are generous lovers in bed.” 

Severus rolled his eyes. “Well, I wouldn’t know about it,” he sneered. “You’re the one taking his class, you tell me if he’s generous or not.”

Sinistra grimaced. “He’s a man. You know that I like girls.” 

True. Both of them were lovesick fools in love with their respective childhood girl friends. ‘Well, me and Lily aren’t friends anymore,’ thought Severus bitterly. 

“D'Orazio kind of reminds me of you,” she said, and Severus was stunned by the comparison. 

“How? He’s handsome and I’m not! And you just said I wasn’t handsome, but only charismatic, ” he hissed. 

“I meant about the facial features. Both of your faces are predominantly masculine, but you both have one feminine trait. You have your doe eyes, and he has very plump lips. Did you ever look at his mouth? It’s very feminine, but as a whole, he stays very masculine.”

Severus shook his head. “Why would I notice his plump lips?”  

Sinistra just shrugged. “I don’t know? Because he has them?”

Severus threw his hands in the air in exhaustion, turning away from her. “What kind of logic is that?”

She sighed, chuckling. “All I wanted to say was that you have pretty eyes and some eyeshadow would suit them. How did the conversation come to this?”

Severus smiled, shaking his head in disbelief. “I don’t know. And by the way, I resent you for telling me you had a crush on Sprout. Now everytime I’ll look at her, I’ll think about her fingers.”

Sinistra pulled out her tongue at him. “That’s not my problem anymore,” she joked. 

“And for your information, I won’t wear eyeshadow to your party. That’s non-negotiable,” he added.

Sinistra took a deep breath and pointed at him, "Okay, no eyeshadow, I concede. However, you have to use this," she stold him, tossing him a small bottle she procured from her bag. 

He caught it with two hands and checked the label: Sleekeasy's hair potion & scalp treatment. Suitable for all hair types. 

"Come on," she said, "two drops and your hair will look like some unicorn mane. Swear this product's the dog's bollocks."

Severus huffed at the vulgarity but did as she ordered, dropping a bit of it on his palm. He then passed his hands over his hair, trying to untangle any knots with his fingers and rubbing the potion as evenly as possible. The miracle was almost spontaneous. His dry locks shifted into soft shiny waves with volume and Severus was left speechless in front of the mirror. He was pretty sure his hair had never looked this good, even as a baby. 'It's really the dog's bollocks,' he thought, admiring himself. 

“Knitted clothing at a party is unacceptable,” she said, and Severus watched her put back the Sleekeasy's in her bag with yearning eyes. "So take that tank top off."

Severus rolled his eyes, but he did take his sleeveless pullover off without any complaint, because he had to admit Sinistra had some fashion wisdom. He gently folded it and put it on one of the sinks that looked the cleanest. 

“And now, give me your shirt,” she said, holding her hand out. 

“What, no!” he yelled, crossing his arms over his chest like a pious maiden. 

“Come on,” she said, “Textum mutatio leaves a horrible feeling on your skin.”

He shook his head. “No way I am getting naked here!”

Sinistra rolled her eyes, but quickly understood he truly wasn’t going to take his shirt off. “Okay,” she conceded. “Here we go then.” She pointed her wand at him, and Severus shuddered in instinctive fear. Nine out of ten, when someone pointed a wand at him, it was to hurt him. “Colovaria,” she said, and his shirt went from white to black. 

As the charm made its work, his shirt warmed up for a split second before going back to its natural temperature. It was easily negligible. 

“Now, are you sure you don’t want to take it off?” asked Sinistra, grimacing. 

“Yes.”

“Alright. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

She pointed her wand at him again. “Textum mutatio.”

As the spell hit him, his shirt began changing, and the agony started. It felt like multiple needles scraping his flesh while a feeling of thousands of insects crawling and buzzing on his skin, and Severus wanted to scream and curl onto himself and hide, but Sinistra stopped him. 

“If you don’t want to lose your shirt, don’t move, or the charm will rip it,” she said, and Severus had to stay immobile, because he couldn’t afford to suffer the loss of the only decent shirt he owned. 

After what felt like an eternity, but must have been just a few seconds, the weird itching feeling stopped and Severus took a deep breath. 

“Told you it would be awful.”

Severus shuddered. It had been worse than awful. It had been bloody hellish.  

“You alright?” she asked and after another deep breath, Severus nodded. “You can move now,” she added and he did exactly that by rubbing his hands over his chest and arms to get rid of that phantom feeling still lingering on his skin. 

“Never again,” he said, then looked down at his shirt, because he was still curious about the outcome. Before, his shirt’s fabric had been thin cotton, and now it was soft silk that shimmered under the light of the few candles illuminating the place. “It’s… acceptable,” he ended up saying, too shell-shocked to come up with anything else.

Sinistra rolled her eyes, but didn’t prod him to give her the praise she clearly deserved, because it wasn’t just decent. It was brilliant. Severus had for the first time such luxurious fabric graze his skin, and for a second he felt like those agonizing few seconds had been worth it.

But Sinitra broke his moment of gawking. “We still have those trousers of yours to take care of.”

He shook his head vehemently. “No way.” He didn’t want any of that needle-insect-ish sensation on his prick.

Sinistra sighed. “Will it help if I do it first on my dress?”

Severus shook his head again. 

“Then turn around, because I’m still gonna change my dress”, she said as she reached for the side of her dress and pulled the zipper there down.

Severus turned his back to her immediately, watching instead the old and cracked tiles of the bathroom. Time and not being frequently cleaned had left them yellow and greenish. 

“Leviosa,” she said, and her voice echoed against those same tiles. “Colovaria. Textum mutatio.”

Sinistra’s dress was a bodycon one with spaghetti straps, made of cheap beige cotton, but when she told him that he could look and he turned around, it had become a rich dark blue velvet dress that complimented her complexion to wonder. 

“So, what do you think?” she asked, smiling, clearly proud of her work.

“It looks… decent,” he managed to mumble.

“Oh my,” she said, her smile turning wry, “you truly do know how to compliment a lady, don’t you, Sev?”

He blushed at the accusation. “I–” he sputtered but she cut him.

“Whatever, just give me your trousers. I don’t want to be late.”

Severus wanted to refuse her again, but well, she clearly knew her way around with that spell, and what if Severus was feeling a bit vain and wanted some nice trousers? He sighed. “Okay… but turn around!”

She chuckled and did so, waiting for him. 

He quickly took off his bottoms and held them out for her. “Here.”

The moment he was just in his underwear, an awful feeling sank to the bottom of his stomach, and all he could think about was Sinistra turning around, looking at his pants and laughing. Severus clamped his legs and knobbly knees together while pulling his new shirt down as much as he could to hide from her averted gaze.  

She blindly reached behind her and after a few tries, managed to get a hold of the trousers. “Leviosa,” she said and they floated in front of her. “Colovaria,” and their faded brown turned a deep inky black. “Textum mutatio.” The fabric transformed into denim. “Here we go,” she whispered, as she contemplated her work. 

Severus couldn’t see her face, but he could imagine the pleased look she was sporting. 

“Than–” as he was going to thank Sinistra for her spells, a shrieking voice cut him. 

“Oh, Merlin! What do we have here! Two love birds!”

Both of them jerked their neck at the speed of light to look at the source of the voice, which was a spectre floating at the top of one of the toilet cubicles: Moaning Myrtle. 

Severus hid his face in his hands and Myrtle started to chuckle. “Oh, don’t be shy. You guys won’t be the first couple I caught, and neither will be the last.”

“I think there is a misunder–” tried Sinistra, but Myrtle cut her too.

“Are you guys going to do it? ” she giggled, putting a hand over her mouth, all bashful, but it left her as quick as it came. “Oh, but I won’t let you! I’m tired of all the people coming here for it and then leaving the place all dirty!”

Severus truly wanted a hole to appear in the floor to swallow him so he could just disappear in the underbelly of the school and never have to show his face ever again to anybody. 

“No, you don’t understand–” Sinistra was really trying to discuss their situation with the ghost, but to no avail. 

“I’ll admit, the part about your parents was touching, but quite boring too, so I left around there, but I come back to check on you guys, and what do I see? He’s half-naked!” she shrieks, pointing at Severus with an accusing finger. “You guys are going to do it!”

“I swear we aren't,” yelled Sinistra. 

“You still have his trousers in your hands!” 

At those words, Sinistra hurled the trousers at Severus with such force, it hit him right in the face and Severus let out a pained gasp. 

“See? I gave them back!”

“DON’T THROW THINGS AT PEOPLE’S HEADS!” shrieked Myrtle, as she flew down in front of Sinistra from the ceiling. “WHAT’S NEXT? A BOOK TO MY HEAD?”

“What?”

But Myrtle had started loudly crying, her sobs deafening, and in an instant, she retreated and jumped into one of the toilet bowls and disappeared through the pipes, leaving a geyser of toilet water behind her. 

“Eww,” gaged Sinistra, as she backed off in a corner to stay away from the sewer water that gushed out like a fountain and covered the floor. Curiously, it steadily flowed towards one of the sinks and quickly drained under it. 

‘Interesting,’ thought Severus. 

A minute later, the floor was back to being dry and it was as if it never had been wet to begin with. 

“What was her problem?” hissed Sinistra,  “Anyway, we should get done here. She’s going to come back and I don’t want to see her again.”  

She furiously started putting her stuff back in her bag and zipped it, then she looked at him, eyebrows furrowed. “Are you going to put those on or not?” she asked, and pointed to the trousers he was holding.

Severus remembered that he was not, in fact, wearing anything other than his pants and he hurriedly started to try to put his trousers back on, half-failing, half-managing by pure chance. He almost fell down twice in his haste. 

By the time he fully put on his trousers and buttoned them, Sinistra was waiting for him by the door. She had shrunk her bag and his jumper and held them out to him. “I don’t have any pockets. Can you keep them for now?”

He nodded and put each in one of his pockets.

“Let’s go,” she said, and made her way out. 

Severus followed her, and they silently made their way to the Gryffindor tower, sticking close to the walls after some quick notice-me-not charms in case they passed close to a teacher. 

Sinistra’s gait was jovial, clearly excited about her first party, as she had explained it to him. Their first party, his mind supplied. They were going to experience those entertaining hours together. Maybe after this one, she would manage to convince him to go to another one? What about after hogwarts? They could– 

They could… do nothing, because war was on the horizon. 

It was coming, and these moments were going to be their last. After that, life was going to beat them down, both him and Sinistra. 

Sinistra, who was going to end up slaving away. Sinistra, who would be taken advantage of by an old man. 

Severus’ blood boiled at that reminder. He wanted to go and find that douchebag and beat him to death now, kill him for having assaulted a young woman in need in a future that hadn’t happened yet. 

He looked at her back. She was walking a step in front of him, and he thought about how much trauma she was carrying, how much she must be disgusted by men, and for good reason. And she still had decided to befriend him.

Suddenly, Severus stopped in his tracks, and held Sinistra’s arm to stop her. She looked back at him quizzically. 

“You know about what you told me…” he said, his first words since they had left that bathroom. “About that old man in Knockturn… I’m so sorry you had to go through that. And…” Why did he have so much trouble putting into words his thoughts? “And,” he repeated, swallowing the lump in his throat, “if you hate a man touching you–” then he noticed he was still holding her wrist and he let go immediately. “Not that I– but you know…” He sighed, and decided to start over. “What I’m trying to say is that, because of what you had to go through, if you are repulsed by touch, especially by a male’s, I won’t touch you without your permission. I would understand.”

Sinistra smiled, and gently took his hands in hers. “I knocked that fucker out before he could do nothing,” she revealed. “Beat him down badly. Made sure I fractured his skull.”

“That’s good,” he said, relief washing over him at those words.

“And then I ended up homeless for more than two months,” she added, shrugging. “Dad said I could come back to the house, but that hag of his wife wouldn’t let me in.”

“I’m so sorry Sinistra,” he whispered, and he meant it fully. He wished he had known her back then. He would have tried to help her. 

‘Would you have?’ his mind asked. ‘You were a Death Eater. The others wouldn’t have accepted you helping a halfblood.’ 

“Oh, Sev! Call me Aurora,” she exclaimed, squeezing his hands. “I’ve told you too many of my sad stories for you to keep using my last name!”

He nodded, “okay.” Then he took a deep breath and said, “Aurora.” 

Aurora’s smile grew bigger.

Notes:

Guess who had to study for an exam, and couldn't properly write? Me.
And also guess who suddenly, while writing the sixth chapter, decided that it needed to have another chapter before it, so she had only 2 days to write 4k words? Also me. And guess who also kept writing and writing and ended up with an almost 9k word chapter that took her two weeks to write? Also Me. Who wants to go to the Four Seasons Orlando? MEEEEE

Right, as I was writing my sixth (now seventh) chapter, I decided it needed another chapter before it, so chapter sixth became seventh, and now we have a new chapter 6. Not only does it help a plot point, but it also helps make Severus and Sinistra more 3d characters (at least I hope so?).

Anyway, sorry for the tardiness. I still need to write a bit more for next chapter (and edit it), but pretty sure it will be posted on the 1st of May. Sadly, we're nearing the May/June exam period and I do have classes to pass, so i can't post it before that date. To make up for it, I can garantee you it will be a long chapter <3

Notes:

This fic will update every 1st and 15th of the month (unless precised otherwise)

Don't forget to leave a kudos or comment if you liked it! <3